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So this is like Medium but with monetised upvotes? Who would pay for upvotes? (and in particular, for a subscription)

Subscribers. Creators can mark their posts as free, as I have done here, but if posts are not marked free you have to subscribe to view them.

Unless you're a seed user (first 1000 people who sign up), then you don't have to subscribe to view non-free posts.

Welcome to Reddit Gold?

Reddit with monetized upvotes is https://steemit.com/