What the hell is a Basic Attention Token (BAT) and why did I buy it?
Basic Attention Token
Basic Attention Token
This is the first installment of the What the Hell did I just Buy? series - and going forward, I will review and introduce no less than three but no more than five coins or tokens each month and give away 20% of the post's earnings to the winner - paid out in the currency featured in the post (winners choice).
To enter, reblog this post and leave a comment with #radagast in the comments section. I'll choose a random winner from all the entries and on July 31st award 20% of this posts total earnings, paid to them in BAT - considering that is the token I'm featuring this month.
What is the Basic Attention Token?
The BAT, a token based on the Ethereum technology, can be used to obtain a variety of advertising and attention-based services on the Brave platform, a new Blockchain based digital advertising system. User attention is privately monitored in the Brave browser and publishers are rewarded accordingly with BATs. Users also get a share of BATs for participating.
What is the Brave Platform?
The web has become a different place. With the ad-tech ecosystem out of control, users have revolted and blocking ads has become the new weapon of choice for improving their browsing speed, safety and privacy. Unfortunately, blocking alone results in a race to the bottom where nobody wins. Without the ability for content creators to earn money for their efforts, users could be left with fewer sites to browse, relegated to hand-picked content from controlled sources.
Brave aims to transform the online ad ecosystem with micropayments and a new revenue-sharing solution to give users and publishers a better deal, where fast, safe browsing is the path to a brighter future for the open web.
Basic Attention Token from BAT on Vimeo.
I like the concept but the Brave browser is where it has its biggest challenge/problem. This specific browser in my opinion will never get adopted by many people. People simply don't want ads and are perfectly happy with their browsers which let them install plugins to remove ads and other unwanted stuff. If Brave does not get used by a lot of people the gains for watching ads with Brave will never reach a nice price point that will make it worth using.
I agree, how many browsers have we seen die due to lack of support? There's a reason most of us stick with Firefox and Chrome... That said, Brendan Eich is a co-founder of Mozilla and the creator of Javascript - so I'm optimistic that something really interesting could grow out of this stuff.
Well... the blockchain/crypto world is immensely immature right now. Won't reach the masses in another 5 years or so. So maybe, if you're willing to hold your BAT tokens for more than 5 years and people will start tot try out the Brave browser it might go somewhere... it won't be my bet though. I don't even know if they can last for another 5 years. But we will see! Perhaps you're going to get real lucky ;)
@valderrama It doesn't have to be Brave browser, it could be a Brave extension maybe, or who know, maybe something even better will start using BAT?
Obviously it's impossible to say, but I think the idea is worth supporting in the sense that it will give incentive to keep working and growing towards something usable.
True, but as with many things... it stands or falls with useage. And in order for revenue to become worth it to look at adds while browsing the internet a lot of people will have to start using it. And that's where the problem lies. As of right now the blockchain/cryptoworld isn't used by the masses and the question is if the mass population will want to try BAT for a while to see if they can collectively get revenue up. As of right now, many many people block adds. The rest of them don't bother or don't know how to block them. The question is... can you reach all people in those groups and move them towards the Brave browser of plugin that must be developed in order to really get a good user base. Difficult task... might work, might not. Either way, we won't see the result anytime soon in my opinion.
Of course not, not any time soon... but that's how new things work. I look at the coins/tokens/whatever worth investing in as the new infrastructure and protocols of the "new" Internet that isn't here yet.
If legislation in the US keeps going the way it's headed, I think a new Internet will be needed and it sort of feels like that is what our participation and investing is helping to do, support the protocols that will help build a more decentralized Internet.
Your legislation argument makes a lot of sense. I hadn't really thought about that. Perhaps if legislation might change a solution like BAT could become a new standard. Standard means everybody and that means potentially huge gains. Interesting.
Thanks, the future is anything but certain - however, you can tell big changes are coming.
Nice. I Also bought Some. Only a few but hoping in a couple of years 2019 they Can pay me family vacation to usa. Read my blog.
I Also have free festival giveaway today
https://steemit.com/music/@rival/steemit-giveaway-2-festival-tickets-26-august
@rival I'm definitely holding my BAT as well, it seems like a project and infrastructure well worth supporting. The dude behind it has some serious clout as well.
I initially liked the look of BAT, interesting idea, experienced people onboard.
So I downloaded the Brave browser to see how it all worked.
After 5 minutes, I couldn't see where/how I get BAT and gave up, app deleted.
I don't imagine many people will get that far to be honest, I just can't see people making the change.
Looks great for the advertisers, but the big question for the user is going to be " what's in it for me? " and the answer is going to be "nothing but the inconvenience of a new browser"
The only hope I see, is that they realize the dream of people adopting a new browser was just that, a dream, and move to making plugins for chrome etc. However, this is something they have said they do not want to do because they think people want a browser that is 0.1 millisecond faster.. so we will see
I imagine we may see a plugin for FireFox before too long, considering Brendan Eich is a co-founder of Mozilla - if that takes off it would probably get ported to Chrome. Hell, if he was smart he'd have his team working on this as we speak.
Nice post. Good to see I'm not the only one who thinks like this. I strongly advice people to only buy in to cryptos that have a solid background: A solid team, product, advisors, preferably VC investors, etc. Sell all cryptos that don't have this solid background. It's a waiste of money. I found this great website: https://www.coincheckup.com Since I use this site I make so much less basic investment mistakes. Go to: https://www.coincheckup.com/coins/Basic Attention Token#analysis To check Basic Attention Token Detailed analysis