Here's the interesting bit for me:

To begin verification, you must have at least ten gold and 100 karma, according to the code.

and

users will have to maintain a certain level of activity and accumulate a designated amount of gold and karma each month to remain eligible for payouts

Sounds like an attempt to drive up reddit gold sales? I deleted my account and still had that one free gold award from forever ago. Feels like the easiest way to do this is have a second account that buys gold and awards it to the primary earning account to meet the minimum.

Quick maffs $20 to get 10 gold awards, which also gives the recipient 1000 coins (worth 2 gold awards for another account, so you'll probably see subs devoted to a black market for discounted gold awards for that accumulated coin) and 10 weeks of reddit premium. It honestly sounds like a very complicated subscription.