What if Reddit awards gave you actual $$$

EDIT: lots of people are mentioning ????. They are awesome, I love what reddit is doing with them, but your average funnypics user is not gonna figure out a tipping bot. They need a control in the app alongside the normal options like edit and delete post that takes them to a screen with standardised tipping levels and yes, allows them an option to pay with ????.

I'm sure this idea has been discussed before but it only really just hit me the power of Reddit awards.

Currently when you give someone an award the poster merely gets recognition. The higher value awards also grant some Reddit coins, but these can only be used to pass on awards to others in a kind of diminishing award circle jerk. Tipping exists, but it's not user friendly to do at all and I imagine a very small percentage of users even know to do it. Personally I've never tipped but I have awarded.

I'm sure this has occurred to the rest of you, but if awards actually had some monetary component, Reddit posting could become a genuine revenue stream for prolific posters, like creating YouTube videos. Average (non techy) normies could reward each other for genuinely valued content.

This also fixes the biggest issues with upvotes: 1. They're free - you just have to have a Reddit account and anything free gets botted. It's a rule of the internet. 2. They're boolean - you either upvote or you don't. You can't say I REALLY like this post, but I just thought that other one was kinda cool, made me lol a bit.

We've seen that people will pay money voluntarily for content they like. People aren't paying for YouTube or twitch subscriptions for the perks - they're doing it to support the creator. Being able to jump in with your card and reward a poster with a few taps would be immensely powerful.