What is the Brave Browser?
Brave is an open-source browser created by the founder of JavaScript and co-founder of Mozilla which built Firefox.
It is built on the Chromium browser which does have a downside if Google makes changes to the browser that kill privacy aspects of Brave, Brave would likely need to implement them.
However as it stands Brave does block online ads and website trackers by default, it also blocks malware, mining scripts (scripts that install themselves and use your computing power to mine BTC), and fingerprinting (a method of connecting a piece of media to your digital fingerprint.) As per their terms of service they also don’t collect, store, view or sell any personal data and all your data remains on your device unless you decide to delete it.
Brave also lets you use Tor (if you’ve used an Onion browser to browse the dark web you’ll be familiar, essentially it is a security and privacy protocol that runs your traffic around different servers and locations to make it very difficult to track you) in private tabs which can anonymize all your web traffic even from your ISP.
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How Can I Earn Crypto With Brave
Users can turn on optional ads and get paid in Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) which essentially are paying you a slice of the revenue from showing you the ad, your payment comes in the form of the crypto token.
The average user earns from 20-40 BAT a month, at the time of writing each BAT is worth .60 cents so around $12-24 a month. You decide how many ads to view an hour up to a maximum of 5. Generally, this is per device too, so if you use your phone to browse the net it pays to use the Brave app and earn BAT there too.
Brave can also help you make money as a content creator, they have a content creator community of over 1.2 million creators and 32.4 million active monthly users. If you run a website or YouTube you can earn BAT from referrals or users tipping you for your content.
What Ads Do I Need to Watch
There are two types of ads you can earn BAT from on Brave:
A) Notification-based ads- these are ads where BAT sends you a notification in the browser and you open the ad in a new tab and then watch the ad.
B) Images that are displayed in new tabs, are ads in the form of an image/ad for a new service, as seen in the screenshot below:
What Can Publishers/Creators Make?
There’s no cap for content creators’ earnings on Brave, it depends on how many of your fans/users use Brave and how many of them tip you. The average content creator earns around 100-200 USD a month in tips. Each of your users can decide to send you some of the hard-earned BAT as a reward or a monthly donation if they appreciate your content, in a way it’s like an in browser Patreon.
The way content creators can earn on Brave is twofold: Get verified as the owner of a site or YouTube page and get tips on BAT from your users, currently, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, and Github all have the tipping feature integrated into their sites. The other way is to share a referral link that you can share to earn more tokens.
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How Does the Price of BAT Change?
BAT price has fluctuated quite a lot since its inception, much like other cryptocurrencies, 2017-2019 the price stayed between .10 -.30 cents a token, but with the crypto boom of 2021 has been as high as $1.5. It’s impossible to predict the price in the future, but if you’re a gambler then HODL’ing could mean making a lot more.
How Do I Get Paid Out?
Brave has partnered with Uphold a digital and crypto wallet, you’ll need to set up an account (which means getting verified, so you won’t be anonymous on Uphold) and then you can store your BAT there, exchange it for ETH or BTC or any number of other cryptocurrencies or transfer it to any major currency and then send it to your bank.
Uphold does charge exchange fees though, so I recommend you only do this infrequently. There is one small catch you need to have 25 BAT to cash out the first time and Brave pays out BAT on a monthly basis.
Criticisms of Brave
Brave isn’t without its critics; a number of users have noted there are a few issues with the platform, one of which being Brave will redirect you from a cryptocurrency link you’ve typed into another site that generates Brave money. Also, they’ve been called out for not really giving the cut of ad revenue back to sites, basically Brave will serve an ad as opposed to Google serving an ad on a site and the site owner has to opt-in to receive that.
To be fair no browser pays unless the website opts in, but given their approach to sharing revenue with content creators some users complain this isn’t very transparent. Other complaints are that Brave isn’t very customisable or modifiable and that on Android there are no native extensions.
Summary
- Brave is a browser where your attention is monetized and you’re rewarded in crypto called Basic Attention Token when you watch or engage with ads.
- The browser is much more security-focused than Chrome (but less so than Firefox) and allows you to decide if you want to be paid to watch ads.
- If you’re a creator you can sign up and your viewers can send you tips for your content.
- You can get paid out in Basic Attention Tokens to a crypto wallet called Uphold and then transfer them to any currency you want, but only after you have earned 25 BAT.