Former BitPay engineer Ryan X. Charles, until yesterday a chief developer of Reddit’s Redditcoin cryptocurrency, has been let go from his position amid a U-turn by the resource.

Charles’ tweet late Thursday signals a change of heart by Reddit regarding cryptocurrency, which he says “is not a part of reddit's near-term plans.”

Charles called the decision “regrettable but understandable.”

I was just let go from reddit because cryptocurrency is not a part of reddit's near-term plans. This is unfortunate, but understandable. — Ryan X. Charles (@ryanxcharles) January 29, 2015

The news came as a shock to many, Charles having posted a screenshot of the project near completion just a few days previously.

In a subsequent response to Reddit’s decision to abandon the idea, he stated that “what happened today was very unfortunate, but I think it makes sense for reddit as a company.”

“[…] I have complete confidence in the new leadership, but cryptocurrency is not in their plans. This is not surprising, because they basically have their hands full with all sorts of other stuff.”

He continued, adding that his release “had nothing to do” with the screenshot he had previously made public.

The community response as a whole to Reddit shying away from cryptocurrency was expected to be a lot less sympathetic, yet responses have so far concentrated on supporting Charles, the most popular of which calling the situation “unfortunate” but stopping short of any direct criticism of the decision.

“I'm fairly confident cryptocurrency will return to reddit in the coming years (and of course you can still buy reddit gold with bitcoin), but it will have to wait a while for things to calm down,” Charles concluded, referring to recent upheaval at Reddit, which saw its relocation to San Francisco and the sudden resignation of its CEO Yishan Wong, which Charles suspects was due to “exhaustion.”

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