Bunp
Here's a few things I want to say that will alleviate people's sketchiness and possibly mold the idea to something far, far better.
I'll go over my main thoughts with this idea first:
1. Earning beats by playing the game is GOOD. This will encourage people to play more (which will probably stop half the shitspam to pro players on "HOW 2 GET BETTER LOLZ", because how you get bette-you play the fricking game, regardless of which song diffs you wanna play. Here's an algorithm that might kinda work.
This algorithm is also based off the little stars you see next to diff name; Easy is green, Normal is blue, Hard is orange, Insane is red, and Extra is purple
First pass of a song = 5 beats
Regular pass after first pass of a song, regardless of amount of times played = 2 beats
FC (No misses or sliderbreaks) = 10-20 beats varying on diff (10 for Easy, 12 for Normal, 14 for Hard, 16 for Insane, and a whopping 20 for Extra
CC (Complete Combo, maximum combo achievable on said map) = 20-100 depending on diff, start with 20 for easy diffs and count by increments of 20 until you hit 100 beats for an Extra CC ( I won't mind if this will be tweaked a little, that many beats is pretty op)
Getting beats for accuracy, map BPM, and UR (yes I did just say Unstable rate) should only be valid under the following circumstances:
Accuracy is 99 or above AT THE LEAST, map BPM is 170 or lower for slower BPM's AT THE LEAST, and 210+ for higher BPM's AT THE LEAST (this could be tweaked as well), UR is 100 or below AT THE LEAST (thinking about having this even lower, like 90 or 80). I emphasize at the least here a lot because I want this to be a good and accurate system. Mods could add an additional amount of beats on too probably, maybe, but this is very variable so I ain't gonna try and put settings for this one
Whew, I think that's it. next,
2. Recieving beats from others is a little ehh, put a cap on the amounts of beats that can be given to a player by another player at any one time for a certain AMOUNT of time and THEN it might be better. Make it variable too, so that you can give say 2 beats a maximum of 50 times for 100 beats total or 100 beats in 1 give total. anything say above 100 beats would need approval from a staff member and a legitimate reason (if you want to give a player say 200 beats for FC or CC'ing a super famous map i.e. Hoshizora on HD DT, that's valid to A CERTAIN POINT, don't give TOO many Beats though) If the staff member is unsure of whether a map is super hard or not to FC or even pass (this can happen) then the staff member may, for example ask for The specific stats of the map (with whichever mods the player of the map is using that other player wants to give beats to.)
e.g. for people that don't entirely get what I just said: giving 200 beats to someone for example that does a super hard map is decent, and if the staff member doesn't know how hard said map is, they ask for stats of map with say for example HD DT (e.g. OD, AR, BPM, etc.)
whew, I think that's clear. hard for me to wrap my own head around that one. next,
3. Recieving beats for say, placing higher than 5th team in an osu tournament out of 20 country teams is decent. overall placing #5-#1 individual is also ok if you want to give beats for that. However, if by buy-in you mean you need a certain amount of beats to get into a tournament or something, I am very against this, because it would encourage beat farming (if this idea was implemented that would definitely be a thing) and would discourage players a little more from wanting to join things like tournaments in the first place, and that's not really a good thing.
4. Rewarding contributors is a decent thing, but it depends by kind of contributor. what i mean is that I'm basically for beatmap creators getting Beats for ranking beatmaps (I mean full ranking, not qualified status,) could be worth something in the hundreds of beats, moderators are a little iffy but I wouldn't be against them getting SMALL weekly paychecks in beats (50-100 per week depending on how active they are, depending on idea might be able to be bumped to 150 or 200, though I'm more comfortable with 150 tbh) which is pretty fair (you could easily earn 150 beats by the following methods of earning them when playing in less than a week even if you're dedicated enough, 200 is iffy which Is why I dislike it being changed to that) and if by VIP's you mean skinners and the like, then that's iffy but maybe once the skin they're making is like fully complete then the community could have a vote based on various aspects of the skin (i.e. how fun it is to play with said skin, how professional it can be, the actual quality of the skin (Photoshop is always better than Paint, for example,) etc etc etc.
next idea, head's getting tired from rereading thought 4
5. everything in the advantages of beats section is decent, however wager matches are a pretty iffy thing. this would make osu a sort of gambling game which I'm not entirely for because most osu! players are softcore or normal, not hardcore. maybe give an option that has to be checked in the options to allow this? then it might work better! Minor player rewards are an amazing idea that can work, however I'm against supporter features with MAYBE the exception of changing name, but indeed at a hefty price so that you can't change your name every 5 seconds. Put it at at least 5-10K Beats and then maybe it's a LITTLE reasonable. (can be super tweaked).
K, thoughts complete, now for one of my own ideas.
Unlocking beatmaps with diffs Hard, Insane, and Extra (color of stars next to diff name corresponds to actual diff like aforementioned) with beats. In addition, the easier difficulty must be played first (e.g. To unlock a hard you need to play the Normal version once and have the right amount of beats.) CDFA's suggestion was getting there but was a little too restricted in my eyes, this one might be a little better. in this way Beatmap Packs can still be downloaded freely, you just need you play easier stuff before the harder stuff.
whew, done.
This was a struggle for me to type in a coherent matter, also as a DISCLAIMER: Things from this post can be tweaked around if this goes to final version of the idea.
kudos to whoever reads this whole post, you're fricking awesome
The extended chat cards are already crowded enough as well, and I'm sure i would like to see everyone's money there too, but it doesn't fit 
