Firstly, they de-valued upvotes and the equality that every user’s opinion had before they were introduced.
And secondly, they were so abundant that they didn’t mean anything anyway.

  • ‘This person deserves praise for what they wrote so I’m going to pay Reddit money’

    I suppose this design may make a bit more sense in the Fediverse, where the money could go directly to the user, or at least to the instance or, say, a charity of the user’s choice, but I still think that having awards would clutter comments sections. /rant