Reddit Notes: The Cryptocurrency That Was Announced and Never Launched
2014–2015
Reddit unveiled plans for a native cryptocurrency, 'Reddit Notes,' promising to distribute 950,000 tokens to the community in 2015, but the project was quietly abandoned within months amid regulatory uncertainty and leadership upheaval.
What happened
In 2014, Reddit publicly floated a native cryptocurrency called Reddit Notes as a way to share value with its community. The plan, tied to the company's September 30, 2014 funding round, envisioned distributing roughly 950,000 Notes via a lottery in fall 2015, with eligibility based on user activity. The concept was pitched around community goals such as charitable donations, crowdfunding, and 'thank-you' tipping, and was described as Bitcoin-compatible.
The project never materialized. Reddit had not resolved how to distribute equity-like tokens within existing securities and cryptocurrency regulations, and disclosed no core technical specifications. By early 2015 — within roughly four months of the most concrete announcements — the effort had been effectively abandoned, with reporting noting that the departure of CEO Yishan Wong (who had championed it) and the firing of the cryptocurrency engineer undermined the initiative.
Reddit said it would defer issuing Notes until the legal and technical landscape matured. No Reddit Notes were ever distributed, and the planned fall 2015 lottery never occurred, leaving Reddit Notes an oft-cited example of an announced-but-vaporware crypto project.
Impact
Left community members who anticipated a token distribution empty-handed and became a frequently cited cautionary tale about premature corporate cryptocurrency announcements.