Minor Balatro spoiler: Look away if you want to avoid learning about something in gold stake.
So, gold stake introduces rental jokers: Jokers that cost a fee per round. Previous stakes brought in infinite jokers, which can never be removed once bought and perishable jokers, which stop working after five rounds.
I like how the stakes progression kind of models the commercial software world. You used to be able to just buy software, and it would work indefinitely. Then, forms of lock-in started appearing, followed by stuff that just stopped running after a while, either through planned obsolescence or the platform changing out from under it. Finally, Balatro models paying for subscriptions for things you used to just pay for once. If there are ever stakes beyond gold, maybe there’ll be jokers with ads, some kind of exploitative user data collection jokers, and in-joker purchases.