The Brave Browser is a browser that is quite a lot like other browsers like Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. The difference is that the Brave Browser has built in tracking blockers and ad-blockers, making it a privacy oriented browser. The company that produces the Brave Browser also produces a cryptocurrency called BAT or the “Basic Attention Token”. The main feature of the Brave Browser is its built in advertisement platform that allows users to opt-in to advertisements and earn cryptocurrency in return for giving their attention to the advertisements.
BAT is Fuel for Brave Browser
Brave Software Inc. is creating an ecosystem of users, applications, and service fueled by their signature web browser, the Brave Browser, and their own cryptocurrency BAT. By using the Brave Browser, users can opt into advertisements, and receive BAT as compensation for their time, attention, and data. This is in stark contrast to how the current advertising and data markets work today. Users are typically left out of the compensation model, which in the opinion of Brave Software Inc, this is a model for a broken internet.
The Brave Browser shows its dedication to your time and privacy every opportunity it gets. Here’s a screen shot of the info that Brave provides every time you open a new tab or window:
As you can see, the browser has automatically blocked many trackers and ads, made sure I have secure connections and has decided to let me know how much time it has saved me as a result. It’s hard not to have gratitude for such a browser.
Who Created Brave Browser?
The Brave Browser was created by Brave Software Inc in 2015. The CEO of Brave Software Inc is Brandon Eich who is the founder of JavaScript.
Alongside Brandon is the core engineers from notable projects such as Mozilla Firefox, another famous and popular privacy oriented browser. The Brave Browser has been in development since 2015, and has regular improvements as the team implements more and more features into the browser.
How is BAT Used?
The Basic Attention Token is being used in more and more places as Brave Software Inc grows the ecosystem. While you can earn BAT for free, simply by using the browser, if you want to earn BAT’s from one of the supported social media platforms, you need to register as a Brave Publisher. Holders of BAT can donate to your twitter, reddit, youtube, github accounts, or directly to any website you own. Aside from this, BAT can be traded on most cryptocurrency exchanges in the world.
How Can I Start Earning BAT for Watching Ads?
Start earning BAT right away by clicking here and downloading the Brave Browser. Once you’ve downloaded the Brave Browser, click through their setup process to set yourself up with an in-browser wallet to hold your BAT.
Next, if you’d like to maximize the amount of BAT you receive, click on the settings, and set the number of advertisements you receive in an hour to the maximum. The browser will pay out the owed BAT on a monthly basis. In order to withdraw your BAT from the browser, you will need to set yourself up with an Uphold account.
Why Do I Need Uphold?
Uphold is a custodial wallet provider that you must use if you want to withdraw your BAT directly. Uphold will require that you pass basic KYC such as providing your name, email, and phone number. It’s always a good idea to set up 2FA when it is offered by the service so that your account is not hacked and your funds are not lost.
Uphold has a built-in exchange. So after you earn your BAT, you don’t have to hold onto it, you can trade it for a wide variety of other cryptocurrencies.
Brave Wallet
Brave offers a large number of benefits for anyone heavily invested in the crypto ecosystem (or prospective investors).
One of the more recent additions to the Brave platform is a built-in, native wallet. Browser wallets are incredibly popular in crypto because you can use them to interact with other protocols such decentralized exchanges (for swaps) or NFT market places (for buying NFTs).
Most browser-based wallets (such as MetaMask or Phantom) have one looming weak point in security: They have to be downloaded.
A very common scam is uploading fake wallets and then stealing users’ recovery phrase. The Brave Wallet doesn’t suffer from that weakness because it’s already built into the browser. No extension is required and users don’t have to download anything.
In addition Brave Wallet offers support for hardware wallets like Ledger and Trezor for extra security. You can even purchase crypto directly in the wallet using the Wyre service in most jurisdictions.
On the downside, Brave Wallet only supports EVM compatible cryptocurrencies (Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche etc.) currently and it doesn’t offer crypto staking.
Brave Browser vs. Chrome
So how does Brave Browser compare to the browser that it’s essentially based on?
Suffice to say that Brave gets the nod over Chrome in numerous ways.
Right off the bat, Brave Browser is a far superior choice for anyone worried about privacy (the sheer amount of data Google collects from people is staggering).
But Brave actually offers a number of benefits over Chrome beyond just privacy. Brave is actually slightly faster (Chrome is known as a resource-hog). You can also earn BAT tokens for using Brave, which you’d never be able to do on Chrome. Brave is better, in general, for anyone involved with cryptocurrency thanks to it’s built-in wallet and wide variety of extensions.
It’s not all wins for Brave, however. Chrome is the superior choice for compatibility with every single website or extension. Brave has a much smaller user base and thanks to its advanced ad-blocking technology it can glitch out certain websites. It’s generally good to have a second browser to test certain websites if you are running into issues.
In general, Brave works great and is a superior choice for anyone interested in cryptocurrency.
How Do I Become a Brave Publisher?
To become a Brave Publisher, go to publishers.brave.com and simply sign up for an account. Once you have an account, and have verified your email, you can start setting up channels that users can donate or “tip” you through. The channels include, but are not limited to:
- Your Website
- GitHub
- Twitch
- YouTube
- Vimeo
Brave allows you to monitor which of your channels are performing the best. As Brave Software Inc grows the ecosystem, they will continue to add more and more opportunities for you to earn tips through various social media channels. It’s as simple as that. It doesn’t take much to open a new revenue stream, and become an early adopter of an exciting new technology and cryptocurrency.
What do I do with BAT once I have?
Once you have BAT, you can trade it for your favorite cryptocurrency, may that be Bitcoin, Ethereum or almost anything else. You can give it to your friends, or donate it to your favorite content creator. You can even trade it for CAD, USD, or EUR right on Uphold and buy your next coffee with it. Brave Software Inc estimated that in 2019, participants watching advertisements can earn around $60 to $70 on the high end. That’s a small coffee every week, just for watching advertisements. Not bad.
Once you start using the Brave Browser, you will start to notice the BAT symbol on YouTube, GitHub, and Tweets. This is the Brave Browsers way of letting you know that you can tip the creator of the tweet, or video. For example, the twitter tweet toolbar now looks like this!
For more information on the Basic Attention Token, please check out our BAT article.
