This is actually a pretty interesting idea. I think it could be interesting and people would likely use it as a currency for contributing resources. People might offer to pay someone a certain amount of reputation to make something for them. People would be motivated to earn reputation by providing resources that users need (models, icons, skins, maps, triggers, etc) because they could then use that reputation that they earned through such things, to pay other users to work with them or make things for them.
It would become something comparable to d2jsp's "Forum Gold", and could perhaps even be renamed to something similar such as "Hive Gems". Perhaps donations could even award "Hive Gems", and past donors would then be given appropriate amounts of gems (As they are contributing to the survival of the site).
This could be wonderful and provide extra motivation for people to create resources, or be terrible as people start to EXPECT payment and might stop working for free.
Please note that I am not saying that such a system should be implemented. It is a risky development that could either be wonderful, or ruin the site entirely. It would need to be carefully thought out first.