Awards still exist. They just streamlined them. Instead of 100 different awards which cluttered the interface right below the post title, they replaced them with 6-7 variations of gold and simplified the UI and look & feel.
1) they don't show on old reddit (I see this as an absolute win)
2) You can't Gold NSFW subs, because....
3) A number of Gold upvotes + posting karma can be exchanged for real world money. Yes, this is probably even worse than what you are imagining. To give a few details of this wonderful idea:
- They say you need to "qualify", but the bar is 10 gold upvotes + 100 karma in 12 months. 100 karma may as well not be a barrier.
- They have pretty weak justifications for how to fight Spam/bots... because they've done a horrible job the last decade fighting spam/bots and it's only gotten worse last year. There's no incentive for them to fight bots anyway.
- Mods can participate in this. And it is not based on their moderation behavior
There's not much upside here as a user unless you need yet another hustle in life.
Making a number go from 4 to 5 probably does not have the same lure for the whales.