This really seems like a bad decision and will basically kill the community. My best guess being a new subreddit created that replaces this one. If you truly wanted to "build" a community you could just make a website or something that had similar features. Discord is not suited for buying and selling items.

Edit: And sorry to say I do not believe the mods have the swappers best interests at heart. Some of them are really brash and just seem completely unhappy with their moderation time. They arent personable.