It looks like you can "tip" communities and users and be tipped yourself for things you post. The incentive to create genuinely worthwhile content is much higher, assuming people actually use the tipping feature.
I suppose with Reddit's "flair" options you could put a BTC address next to your username in a lot of subreddits. But BTC is a lot more effort than just clicking a button, unless the site sets itself up specifically to use BTC, at which point why not just use real money?
Take a look at all the "gilded" posts on Reddit. I see dozens of them every day. People love spending a few bucks here and there to show their appreciation for good content, but all of that money goes straight to Reddit rather than the person that created or shared that content. I would much prefer the majority of my "gildings" to go to the user, rather than the site.
Well, there's a lot to it and the more you use it the more you understand it. I think we need to get a lot better at getting the real value prop to new users in a better way, so thanks for highlighting this.
