I think I may have some insight here. This isn't something that was reactionary imo, maybe the timing is, but the idea has been around for a while. They have been toying with this idea on /r/cryptocurrency for a while with "moons" and the admins have discussed bringing that same thing to the larger ecosystem. Though, the admins probably are worried about the SEC with moon tokens, so they are turning to regular dollars.

In /r/cryptocurrency this required much more serious moderation (look at the size of the mod team), they have some pretty advanced moderation tools compared to most other subs.

I don't think reddit knows what they are asking for, but they are gonna get it, a whole ton of repost / chatgpt garbage. This is sadly probably the downfall of reddit, if it wasn't the API pricing, this surely will turn it into a bot/karma removed garbage dump.