Let’s talk about BAT - Basic Attention token

I am bored with all the latest posts about a new shitcoin or missing opportunities to buy another shitcoin. So, why not talk about something usable, having potential and could become big with more and more adoption. I am talking about BAT - Basic Attention token

Q: What is BAT?

A: BAT was created by the co-founder of Mozilla and Firefox - Brendan Eich and Brian Bondy, formerly of Khan Academy and Mozilla.. BAT is an Ethereum token and is a native token of Brave Software's blockchain-based digital advertising platform.

Q: How can you earn BAT?

A: Download Brave browser and opt into Brave Rewards. Users earn BAT for their attention by viewing ads. Creators are rewarded according to their content and the attention it gets. Advertisers can also buy ad spaces using BAT. So basically, one gets paid for providing their private metadata.

Q: So why BAT has vast growth potential?

A: Brave browser has more than 38.9 Million monthly active users and 13.4 Million daily active users. BAT use cases include:-

1. Users earn BAT for their attention and also get privacy using Brave browser.

2. Content creators get paid for making great content

3. Advertisers get better returns by targeting the audience.

4. Brave recently launched its search engine, replacing Google.

Thus, I am batting for the BAT.

If you are interested to the previous posts of this series, check it out here:

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What is it?

Basic Attention Token (BAT) is a utility token based on Ethereum technology for digital advertising and are used as a digital currency between publishers, users and advertisers on the Brave browser. The browser prevents advertisers from invading users space and privately measures users attention on certain websites. Brave browser is 2-8 times faster than Chrome and Safari.

How does it work?

This token aims to "save" the digital advertising system in this digital era when the privacy of internet users is heavily invaded. Under the current conditions, web users are publicly monitored by advertisers and browsers through various channels. User privacy is not respected by advertisers since browsers can keep track of which pages you visit often, which accounts you follow and in no time, blow the phone with a myriad of ads with your "interests" that they have discovered. This changes with the introduction of the Brave Browser which offers a private platform for its users. BATs are used by advertisers who trade in BAT to purchase advertising space from content creators and user attention from brave browser users. The amount of time spent on the ad is labeled 'attention' and users can also allow the ads to run on their devices at a small cost, offering BAT tokens. Publishers and content creators receive advertising revenue and user contributions or donations to create better content while users are rewarded with BATs for their attention (where users are privately "linked" to their interests, confirmed anonymously and presented with meaningful advertisements that they are interested in). Users have the choice of whether or not to opt-in to see the ads, which use a separate open source component. When users opt to receive ads on the platform, the ads will be shown based on their interests and confirmed anonymously. In November 2017, the founders of BAT announced that users could now give tokens directly to their favorite channels, thereby increasing user and publisher activity on Brave. But what is BAT token? BAT, an ERC20 token, is developed on a smart contract based on the Ethereum blockchain. The token uses Proof of Work (PoW) technology. However, to maintain network security, use Zero-Knowledge Password proof, (ZKP). This is a process that does not require password swapping when logging into your account. Lack of passwords means they shouldn't be stolen. Users are required to demonstrate that they know some secret questions about the person on the other side.

Where to store it?

The best hot wallet for BAT are MyEtherWallet, TrustWallet and Atomic Wallet. If you want more security, a cold storage like Ledger is the right choice.

Pros&Cons

*DISCLAIMER* These lists are subjective, it depends from person to person

Pros

1. Very fast and intuitive browser

2. Interesting partnerships

3. Great devs team

Cons

1. Low adoption

2. Scalability issues

3. As stated in its white paper, 'in the early stage, the flow of BAT token will be regulated by Brave’. So, for now, it seems pretty centralized

I noticed a new icon on Reddit today, the BAT logo with the word "Tip" beside it. This is showing up next to every Reddit post and comment, presumably to Brave browser users only. After a little research I found that you can connect your Reddit account by signing up at https://creators.brave.com. From there you can link your Reddit as well as YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, and Github.

EDIT: Apparently this is not new. I just started using Brave a week ago, so I guess I just didn't notice the icon until now!

EDIT: Posted on medium as well, better formatting

BAT is not Brave An evaluation of the Basic Attention Token

Overview

The Brave browser is one of the few success stories of this crypto market cycle. The ad blocking, wallet enabled browser has only gotten better and better as time passes and it's now almost up to feature parity with major players like Chrome and Firefox.

Prominent influencers such as angel investor Naval Ravikant claim to use it as their primary browser.

A key part of the Brave ecosystem is its native token, the Basic Attention Token(BAT).

High Expectations

According to the BAT whitepaper, BAT is meant to be used as a payment /rev share system in which users and publishers get BAT from an advertiser after they view an ad.

Visual Representation from the whitepaper

Brave envisions a world in which users use BAT to pay for all kinds of digital services including "high resolution photos, data services, or publisher applications".

Harsh Reality Settles in

After reviewing BAT's token model, I have come to a few conclusions:

1. General crypto mania coupled with unbridled enthusiasm about the Brave browser has led to wildly inflated valuations of BAT.

2. Even in the best case scenario, BAT accrues minimal value long term.

3. Even though the price of BAT has fallen significantly(86% since its all time high) during the bear market, it is still significantly overvalued compared to other payment only tokens.

Because of this, I started filling a long term short position in BAT. The purpose of this writing is to explain how I got to these conclusions.

A Favourable Retail Short

Investors get a lot more rational during a bear market. They take a harder look at their portfolios and exit losing positions.

For the first time, it is possible for retail crypto investors to bring rational price discovery to ERC20 tokens like BAT by shorting them.

This is due to the availability of ERC20 token borrowing on Compound Finance and Dharma, both permissionless decentralized lending and borrowing protocols. These protocols have risks associated with them so use them wisely.

The rest of this writing will explain the reasoning behind the short.

Token Analysis

BAT's Token Economics

BAT is a payment only cryptocurrency. The token economics of payment only tokens all but guarantee they cannot accrue value long term. Much has been written about these payment tokens and the velocity problem.

Here's the short version: Given the choice, any user of a service would want to pay for that service in the currency they are comfortable with. I.e People taking loans on Ethereum would prefer to pay for them in ETH or DAI.

Payment only tokens force potential users to pay for services in the payment token. This is huge source of friction and represents an enormous hindrance to adoption. Potential users will simply turn to the competition if friction is high.

Even users who persevere through this horrible UX will immediately exchange this token for a currency that they actually value. If there's no incentive to continue to hold this money, users will exchange it as fast as possible causing downward price pressure.

Take note of the economic forces at play here:

1. Brave, the service company, wants to reduce friction, improve UX and keep users from switching to another browser.

2. Brave is incentivized to remove source of friction(the token) altogether or switch to a currency users actually want to use(such as ETH/DAI).

3. Brave users do not want to hold the token so they sell it immediately, causing downward selling pressure.

Other payment only tokens feeling the pain

Other payment tokens are plagued by this issue. For example, let's look at Quantstamp, a smart contract auditing company. They did an ICO with their native token, QSP.

QSP is a payment only token used by customers to pay for audits. Turns out Quantstamp had been accepting USD or ETH as payment for audits instead of QSP. Its community was livid.

Quantstamp put out a statement, saying:

"While Quantstamp has accepted QSP, USD, and Ether, the latter two are only accepted for our current offerings and out of client and customer necessity, as not everyone is currently capable of acquiring and using our token,"

Take note of the wording here.

Potential Quantstamp customers did not want to acquire their token to pay for services and they likely lost customers to competitors.

Brave's customers, advertisers, will not want to acquire BAT to pay for services.

Quantstamp faced a choice and pragmatically chose their customers over token holders. I expect Brave to do the same.

QSP is worth $0.015 at the time of this writing(12/12/2018). The circulating supply of QSP is ~600K, almost half of BAT's.

Yet BAT is currently trading at 10 times the value of QSP.

Macro Environment

The regulatory environment in the US has become increasingly hostile to ICO issuers. The SEC has recently taken action against 2 ICO issuers for failing to register as securities offerings and they've shown no sign off slowing down.

This hostile regulatory environment is a mine field for ICO issuers like Brave.

On the one hand, they can claim their ICO token is a payment only token, more like airline miles or credits than a security. But by that definition, these "airline mile tokens" are inherently not valuable.

Again, ICO issuers face a choice, this time between token holders and regulators.

Conclusion

Brave is an innovative product that creates value for their users. Malicious and intrusive ads are a real pain point for users and Brave is solving that problem with smart ad blocking.

BAT, on the other hand, is simply a fund raising tool that Brave used during the speculative bubble of 2017.

As the market matures and becomes more rational, payment only tokens like BAT will go to 0.

$40 has been bandied about by many BAT optimists here, but is that the maximum price, or just a good-natured meme? Here are some calculations:

• Let's say that Brave took the place of Alphabet, better known as Google. Assuming that Brave Software International had about 60% of the total browser market share, and that there are 5 billion Internet users in the world, that would equal 3 billion Brave users, which is about 40% of the world population.

• Assume that due to such a large user base, a focus on privacy and expanding use cases, a desire to remove pretenses of imperialism, etc, BAT becomes a sort of "reserve cryptocurrency" used for international trade, and that such trade amounts to approximately $20 trillion in the near future.

• Divide that by 1.5 billion BAT, and that is a maximum theoretical price of approximately $13,000 per token based on international trade alone.

• This does not take into account numerous smaller factors, such as advertising, or factors that are harder to quantify, such as User and Creator Wallet balances. This also does not take into account the possibility that Brave-using governments might want to pay for international goods using legacy currencies anyway in some cases, which could, and probably will, lower the maximum price of BAT.

Even with legacy currencies still in play, $2,000 per BAT does not seem so far-fetched now, does it?

I plan to post about a different crypto daily for a while to help to promote discussion and ideas, and also to help myself and others learn more.

Clearly, no one can predict the future, and nothing here should be taken as financial advice. However, I am sure there are some valuable personal opinions out there, and there is definitely an entertainment value in reading stuff like this.

Regarding the crypto of the day, Basic Attention Token, I am curious of the following...

Currently at $0.28 after a significant market drop recently, and this past week topped out at $0.3202.

What do you predict over the next month?

What do you predict for the end of 2020? 2021? 2025?

Anyone here suggest investing 50%+ into this project? Or is this in at least your top five or top ten crypto?

What should we all know, good and bad, about this project?

Unless anything drastic happens to this project, or the crypto market in general, what is likely the floor?

It seems people are likely to post the positive in each project, but please remember that critical insight is just as useful. 

The price of bat 🦇 is funny.

BAT has an enormous potential since just web ads are multiple hundred billion dollar business on a yearly basis.

BAT is a ERC-20 token which is an underlying currency of a web browser called Brave.

Brave browser comes with ads blocking, optional ads to earn rewards in BAT tokens, protects your privacy, has faster engine and is chromium based browser (same engine as Chrome).

It even supports onion routing via tor to provide you with a decent level privacy on the desktop.

There is also available browser for mobile.

And it has a sexy icon.

Do your part be brave like a lion 🦁 and use brave browser because by using brave browser you support crypto.

Hi,

Is it possible to set up a validator node on the BAT protocol?

This is a project that I honestly see having a future and I'm wondering if it's possible to become a validator.

In a very high level, I constantly look out at some metrics on Brave and BAT market share and how that is related to BAT market value. I constantly look out for:

· MaU (monthly active users) and DaU (daily adtive users). Source: bravebat.info.

· Active Campaigns. Source: bravebat.info.

· BAT Purchases for Ads. Source: bravebat.info.

· Verified Creators. Source: bravebat.info.

· Google Play Reviews. Source: Google Play.

· Mozilla Revenue (royalties, ads and subscriptions regarding Firefox): 562 MM USD in 2017, 450 MM USD in 2018, 828 MM USD in 2019, 496 MM USD in 2020. Source: Mozilla annual report.

· Opera financial results: 177 MM USD in 2019 and 165 MM USD in 2020. Net income per add: 1.48 USD. Around 120k ads in 2020. Source: Opera annual report.

· OPRA market Value: around 830 MM USD. Source: NASDAQ: OPRA.

· Market Share: FireFox around 5% and Opera around 2%, Brave uses Chrome User-Agent. Sources: Different sites.

There is a big difference between the token BAT and a company share or a token issued by a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). Those differences directly affects BAT valuation. BAT is totally managed by Brave Software INC. and Brave makes decisions that directly impact on BAT value without consulting or informing BAT holders. Some current decisions taken by Brave signals that this might be an issue for BAT holders and Brave in the future: (1) Brave is charging for the products Brave Talk and Brave Search in USD instead of a transaction that would increase BAT value; (2) Brave decided unilaterally what would be the benefits for BAT holders on swaps on Brave Wallet.

I think there are some technical problems on BAT scalability that limits the decisions over the use of BAT in products transactions. Brave already announced the solution to those problems (BAT running on Solana network). So far BAT holders and Brave are in the same boat trying to growth and improve Brave Products. Therefore, I personally don’t think that today there is an issue. But, in the future, Brave might have a conflict of interest on the decisions regarding BAT.

Considering all that, I have the following thoughts on a very high level BAT valuation:

· The MaU is currently around 50MM users and the Market Value is 1.3B USD, that would give a valuation of 26 USD per user, what I think is a valuation below what is worth.

· BAT market cap is 1.3Bi and Opera market cap is 830MM. But it is necessary to consider that BAT is not Brave. I think Brave has a much higher potentiality and other products besides the browser. BAT also has a lot more liquidity and is listed in almost all exchanges.

If anyone has other sources of information or disagree about any thoughts please share.

Edit: Maybe the post focused too much on the relation between Brave and BAT and not too much on the potential of BAT. I think the product has a huge potential.

A browser is the entrance door for other products. What normally experts says is that the important thing is to have the customer, after having it you will figure out what products to offer and how to monetize it. A browser with a wallet built in, like Brave, can be entrance door for the crypto world for all its users. And Brave users are growing exponentially.

Average customers are not interested on which network chain the protocol runs in, they just want to have a good product with a good UX. The chain network is a backend not a frontend issue. Brave knows that and want to be a multichain product. Brave users will trust Brave on the decision (or to assist on the decision) about security of the chain network. And trust brings value.

Brave products wants to compete with the bigtech, Brave Search competes with Google Search, Brave Browser with Chrome, Brave News with Instagram. I don't need to mention the potential of the revenue if Brave take even a small step on the direction to be a competitor.

Considering other crypto assets, I BAT has a really undervalued market cap.

Finally, Brave sees BAT holders as Stakeholders, they have no intention to harm holders.

Basic Attention Token (BAT), one of the widely used ERC-20 tokens with a real-life application, is having a rally to new all-time highs above $1.70. BAT, a token tied to the Brave browser and tokenized online ads, has lagged behind other assets despite its wide adoption. 

BAT rose by more than 44% overnight, extending its previous rally, to recover its previous all-time high and achieve price discovery at $1.73. The recent climb also coincided with near-peak trading volumes above $2.7B in the past 24 hours. 

The immediate reason for the BAT rally is a recent announcement the asset would be accepted as payment at Regal Cinemas. 

But for BAT, the buildup to a new all-time high has happened over the years. BAT hovered around $0.22 for years before its breakout in 2021, leaving behind its all-time high from early 2018 at just $0.89. 

BAT has also remained behind the trend of DeFi, with only limited usage as a liquidity token. Most BAT circulates in the Brave browser online ad economy. The latest growth model shows Brave browser carries more than 36M active users per month.

BAT is held in more than 400,000 wallets, which is about 10 times the usual holding rate of other ERC-20 tokens. The asset is immensely popular and widely distributed, though about 20% of the tokens may be available on centralized exchanges for speculative trading. Read Full Story

Story Highlights:

• Basic Attention Envisions Gaming Future

• Is BAT a Good Investment?

• BAT May Follow Game Token Trend

• Altcoin Economy Gains Dominance

Welcome to r/BATProject, the official subreddit for Basic Attention Token (BAT)! This introductory guide is designed to help you gain a big picture understanding BAT: what it is, what it solves, and how. For more detailed information, please refer to the whitepaper. For an outline of BAT's release phases, please refer to the roadmap.

You can find fantastic beginner tutorial videos, courtesy of Coinbase, here. Also see our BAT Community YouTube channel for more video content.

Note: Please note that BAT is still in development and that some of the features mentioned herein have not yet been released. This guide will be continually updated.

What is Basic Attention Token (BAT)?

Basic Attention Token is a blockchain-based digital advertising and rewards platform from the creator of Javascript and co-founder of Mozilla & Firefox. Basic Attention Token is integrated into BAT-enabled applications, such as the Brave web browser.

The BAT token is an Ethereum-based ERC20 utility token, utilized as the unit of account within the overarching BAT platform:

1. Advertisers transact in BAT tokens to purchase advertising space (user attention) within the BAT Ads network. Advertisers may also pay in fiat, which is then exchanged for BAT behind the scenes (see our transparency page). Advertisers can use a self-serve ad manager or Brave's managed account services to launch their campaigns. To advertise, please visit https://ads.brave.com

2. Publishers and content creators receive user contributions (e.g., tips) and ad revenue in BAT. (Publishers/creators use the Creator Dashboard.)

3. Users earn BAT tokens for opting into Brave Ads. (Users use BAT-enabled applications such as the Brave browser.)

Custodial wallet and exchange services, such as those provided by our partner Uphold.com, allow mainstream parties to be part of the BAT ecosystem, without specialized knowledge of blockchain.

Example Flow

1. An advertiser launches an ad campaign using the BAT self-serve ad dashboard or through Brave's managed account services.

2. The ad campaign (its description, format, clickthrough URL, creative, duration, targeting categories, etc.) is added to an ad catalog.

3. The ad catalog is downloaded into BAT-enabled applications such as the Brave browser.

4. The Brave browser uses local, on-device machine learning algorithms to match ads inside the ad catalog to the user's interests and browsing context. User data therefore never leaves the device.

5. Once a match is made, Brave delivers a targeted ad to the user at an opportune moment in their browsing experience.

6. For seeing the ad, the user is rewarded a percentage of the gross ad spend for that advertisement. Users receive 70% for User Ads, which appear as system notifications, and will earn 15% for Publisher-Integrated Ads, which appear on or in conjunction with publisher content (e.g., an on-page banner ad).

Brave Rewards: How does BAT work with the Brave browser?

Brave is an open-source, privacy-focused, performant web browser with millions of users that blocks third-party ads, trackers and mining scripts by default, and offers a set of powerful pro-privacy features (such as Tor-browsing). Brave is available on Android, iOS, Windows, macOS and Linux.

Brave is a BAT-enabled web browser that integrates the BAT platform through a feature called Brave Rewards. Brave Rewards includes (1) Brave Ads, (2) Tipping and (3) Auto-Contribute.

Brave Ads

Users who opt into Brave Ads see privately-matched advertisements from the BAT network and earn a share of the ad revenue in BAT tokens. Since ad matching and delivery is performed by the browser entirely client-side, Brave Ads requires absolutely no user data collection or tracking. (See section: "What Makes BAT Different?" for more.)

There are two kinds of advertisements in Brave Ads:

1. User Ads: User ads are delivered directly to the user via a system notification at specific moments in the user's browsing experience. If the user clicks on the notification, the ad landing page opens in a new browser tab. Users earn 70% of ad revenue for user ads.

2. Publisher-integrated Ads: Publisher ads are viewed by the user on or in association with publisher content: e.g., a banner ad on a website. Publishers must first be verified with Brave and then opt into having banner ads appear on their content. Publishers will earn 70% of ad revenue, and users 15%, for publisher ads.

3. New Tab Sponsorship Ads: NTS Ads are high quality brand sponsorships that appear as beautiful background images on Brave's New Tab page. Users earn 70% of the ad revenue for NTS Ads. Learn more about NTS Ads in our announcement post.

What can I do with BAT?

As a user, BAT tokens can be used in conjunction with Brave Rewards to support one's favorite publishers and content creators on the web via tips and other contributions. However, Brave Rewards also lets users redeem premium content, subscriptions, paywalls, [gift cards](https://brave.tapnetwork.io], etc. with participating publishers and merchants. Premium subscriptions and other content purchased with BAT will generate cryptographic receipts that allow the user to enjoy purchased content without having to register for an account with the content provider.

Users can also transfer BAT tokens out of the Brave Rewards wallet by linking an exchange account (called "verifying one's wallet") to their Brave Rewards wallet.

Brave Ads Campaign Performance Metrics

Brave Ads utilizes a "blind tokens" protocol inspired by Privacy Pass to provide advertisers with performance data for their campaigns.

Ad campaign performance metrics include:

• Ad views

• Click-through rates

• Dismissals

• 10 second landings

• Thumbs up/thumbs down

Additional performance metrics will continue to be added over time.

With Brave's privacy protocol, Brave cannot tell which ads a user viewed within a particular ad campaign price bucket, only that the user has been rewarded for the correct number of ad views.

Brave Tipping & Auto-Contribute

Users can support their favorite publishers and content creators with monthly BAT token contributions and on-the-spot BAT tips. By default, Brave Auto-Contribute will divide a user's monthly auto-contribute budget across visited websites and channels based on how much time the user spends on each. Users can also directly tip websites or channels instantly, and make these tips recurring. When a user contributes to a creator who has not yet verified with the platform, the tip/contribution is marked as "pending" and will remain so for 90 days. During that time, the user’s browser periodically checks to see if the creator has verified, and if so, will process the contribution.

Brave uses a privacy protocol to protect users' privacy during the contribution and tipping process. For example, Brave cannot tell which publishers/creators a user contributed to—only that someone contributed to a given publisher/creator. (Learn more about our privacy protocol, here.)

Is BAT restricted to the Brave browser?

While the Brave browser represents the first "BAT-enabled application" and is the primary focus of BAT Roadmap 1.0, the team intends to extend the BAT ecosystem beyond the Brave browser. We envision the BAT platform being extended to other web browsers, chat/messaging applications, games and other attention-economy apps via open source mobile app SDKs, connected TV SDKs, etc. (Read more about our upcoming BAT SDK, here.) For more info on the potential areas of expansion, see our Driving User Adoption and Extending the BAT Platform blog post.

The BAT SDK that will allow developers to integrate BAT-functionality (such as privately-matched ads with revenue share) into their own applications, allowing developers to monetize their apps and reward their userbase.

"I don’t want to corner the browser market; I think Brave will have a good growth curve and lots of market share among elite users who are very economically valuable, but BAT is the big play. I want the Basic Attention Token to be used widely, which means we will bring it to other browsers and other attention apps — things like podcast players, or games that have ads in them.” —Brendan Eich

Developers can also interact directly with BAT's public ERC20 token smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain.

What makes BAT different?

BAT represents a fundamental rethinking of digital advertising. The current model depends on third-party tracking, surveillance with tracking pixels, scripts, cookies and countless middlemen as advertisements are matched and delivered to users by external servers.

BAT eliminates the need for third-party tracking and middlemen by matching and delivering ads client-side, locally and on-device. In Brave, an ad catalog comprised of landing page URLs and other campaign segmentation data will be periodically downloaded into the browser. Brave will then match and deliver ads from the catalog to the user, using client-side machine learning algorithms against locally-stored data. Since all matching happens client-side on locally-stored data, absolutely no tracking or user data collection is required, including by Brave Software. (Read more about BAT's innovative, privacy-respecting matching/targeting system in this post.)

Targeting and delivering ads client-side confers many benefits:

• Privacy. Users’ browsing data (e.g., browsing history) can be kept private, as all data required for ad-matching never leaves the device and third-party trackers are blocked by default.

• Improved ad matching. BAT Ads in the browser can see everything: search queries, Amazon queries and consummations, click logs/tab constellations, absolute above the fold and Z-order visibility and viewability. The browser has the full corpus of user data and intent signals, including active tabs, URL and search keyword entry data, browsing history, etc. The BAT platform, in conjunction with the browser, can therefore match ads with greater precision and determine if a user is actually in the optimal time and place in their browsing experience for an offer.

• Better experience. Since ad matching is performed locally, users do not need to call out to external servers on every page load for tracking scripts, tracking pixels, etc. This leads to a quantifiably faster browsing experience, in addition to battery life and data usage savings. Moreover, since ads can be served in a separate ad tab and not only interstitially, the BAT model helps avoid “banner blindness” and brand-safety issues.

How do I purchase BAT tokens?

• Through BAT’s partner, Uphold.com (fiat currencies, credit & debit card, cryptocurrencies)

• Through Coinbase.com (fiat currencies, credit & debit card)

• By funding one’s Brave wallet with BTC, ETH or LTC (automatic conversion to BAT tokens will occur in the background)

• With credit card or debit card directly through the in-browser wallet

• Secondary exchanges that list BAT

^{Note: While we are aware that the token is currently being traded on the exchanges listed} here^{, we have not encouraged or facilitated this exchange trading in any way. We have provided the foregoing information solely as a means of reducing the inquiries we receive directly.}

Partnerships & Verified Publishers

BAT and Brave have or have had official partnerships with Dow Jones Media Group, DuckDuckGo, Coinbase Earn, Cheddar, TownSquare Media, Qwant, CIVIC, among others. Major YouTube star partners include Philip DeFranco and Bart Baker.

Hundreds of thousands of websites, YouTube creators, Twitch streamers and more are verified creators with the Brave Rewards program and receive monthly contributions in BAT tokens from their audiences. Publishers who've already verified with Brave Rewards include major sites such as Wikipedia, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The LA Times, NPR.org, VICE, Vimeo, Slate, Barron's, Ars Technica, Khan Academy, in addition to major YouTube and Twitch channels totalling over several hundred million subscribers. For a full list, see BATGrowth.com, a community-made resource.

BAT Token Launch Info

BAT's token launch took place on May 31st, 2017. The total supply of BAT tokens (1.5B tokens) was created during the token launch, of which 1B tokens were sold and the remaining 500M set aside for a user growth pool and development team pool. Tokens are designed to redeem services and provide utility within the platform. There are no plans for any subsequent token creation event or sale.

The proceeds from the token launch are being used for the development and growth of the platform. See this blog post for a breakdown of how the proceeds are distributed.

In addition to the token launch, the project is funded by Founders Fund, Foundation Capital, Propel Venture Partners, Pantera Capital, DCG, Danhua Capital, and Huiyin Blockchain Venture among others.

Why should I care about BAT?

The multibillion-dollar digital advertising industry is in crisis. User privacy has become a casualty in an ever-increasing consumer-surveillance ad model that relies on tracking and profiling users. Publishers and content creators are shutting down or retaliating with self-destructive tactics as users enable ad-blockers in response to privacy violations, irrelevant ads and malvertising. Ad fraud is rampant throughout the system ($16B or more in the US alone in 2017), and advertisers are struggling to find solutions that comply with new GDPR regulations.

Basic Attention Token fixes underlying economic incentives by correctly pricing user attention, delivering on privacy compliance, and offering a new win-win-win digital advertising paradigm for publishers, advertisers and users.

With BAT,

• Publishers will be able to remonetize lost segments while adding additional revenue streams;

• Advertisers will see better ad matching, brand safety, less fraud and more transparent accounting macro flows on the blockchain;

• Users will be rewarded for their attention, and will no longer have to sacrifice their data, privacy or web experience.

BAT is a brilliant solution to a systemic problem, spearheaded by the creator of JavaScript, co-founder of Mozilla and Firefox, alongside an all-star team.

Here's my thoughts on $BAT Basic Attention Token and why I think it's due for 10x in the next 6-12 months and 2x in the next 2 weeks.

Caveat (I like the model so I'm singing some praise here).

I've spent 15 years in advertising, digital advertising for big agencies. I'm still in digital advertising. I just learned about Basic Attention Token. Read the white paper, tested their Brave Browser. This concept is a game changer for Digital Advertising. Ads have been steadily losing popularity (exponentially) and perhaps this is a platform that could change that.

It's way undervalued IF they deliver on their promises.

edit Some really good points brought up. Potential pitfalls and challenges. See in comments below.

I see growth potential. The team looks super solid (guys behind Brave created the damn Javascript language). I actually think they have a decent chance of carving out some ad dollars. Advertisers are always looking for ways to both ensure that their ads are seen and ensure that the viewers of their ads have positive sentiment around their ads. Even if this never becomes as big as chrome as a browser or facebook / google as a company. There could still be a LOT of growth of a 200M market cap. It's not unrealistic to expect them to grow to 5B its still a drop in the bucket compared to Facebook and Google's 1.1+ Trillion combined market cap. Almost all of FB's revenue is digital ads and Google's revenue is still around 35% advertising revenue btw. So you can see how even a niche business could be grown.

We've seen the the rapid growth of ad blockers, they are the bane of my existence and a constant threat to digital advertising which again has grown faceebook and google to be over a 1 Trillion combined market cap. Perhaps BATs reward system can chip away at their market cap.

Thanks for reading :)