The idea was to make it so that players were having to either keep what they got or sell it for cash. It's not proven to be a very popular approach though so I've plans to ditch it and take another tilt at setting up hard mode.
It's difficult to get balance right between what's tedious and what's actually difficult.
Prime example is enemy HP: you definitely need more meat on stuff for hard mode, but if you just buff everything into infinity then it just turns into a boring slog. But if you don't buff things enough, then people can just go super aggro and never really bother with some mechanics (The Calamity comes to mind, which is definitely susceptible to just nuking it down).
There's also some OP stuff left that might need addressing for a satisfying hard mode experience (DEF-ignoring weapons, Goblin Song, White Wind, etc.).