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I don't understand the recent Brave hype to be honest. Shut third party ad and data companies out, try to capture the entire stack, with some BAT tokens slapped

I don't understand the recent Brave hype to be honest. Shut third party ad and data companies out, try to capture the entire stack, with some BAT tokens slapped on top to monetize. It's like the crypto street-dealer version of Apple.

rglullis 5y ago
> try to capture the entire stack, with some crypto stuff slapped on top to monetize No. The last part of your sentence is what stops them from being able to do the first. There is absolutely nothing stopping any competitor to set a different ad network that also uses BAT as the payout. There is nothing stopping Facebook (or any other media company actually) to start accepting BAT for payments.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  there's nothing stopping anyone from taking dollars, what does that have to do with brave's business model? When you use the brave browser, brave takes a share of publishers ad revenue in the bat program, just like Google or Apple do, and publishers who want to participate have to agree with the terms and conditions set by, you'll never guess it, the Brave developers. Whether Apple, Google or Brave pay you in dollars, bitcoin, BAT or sheepskin changes nothing about the fact that they all attempt to generate value by taking control of the distribution channel. The difference of course being that Google and Apple at least pay you well and in dollars rather than a crypto token that has been premined by the company that also happens to run the browser and in reality isn't going to be adopted outside of the Brave ecosystem. Imagine if Amazon started to pay its vendors in Amazon gift cards, that's what Brave is. (everyone is free to accept amazon gift cards, of course!)
  - rglullis 5y ago
    > there's nothing stopping anyone from taking dollars, Yes, there is. There is a good part of the world where people can not accept payments in dollars, so the revenue share program wouldn't work. Not to mention the tipping system. If they wanted to do with "real cash", they would have to either find a global partner like Western Union (yuck), or partner with PayPal (double yuck) or become themselves a money transmitter (basically impossible) Granted, what they could've done would be to use another existing token. And they did just that, at first. The first version used BTC. It didn't catch on. It was only later that they did the ICO. It would be nice if they used a stabletoken, but DAI was launched after BAT's ICO, Tether is poison and USDC is centralized. BAT is not ideal, but there was no better alternative at that point in time. > terms and conditions set by, you'll never guess it, the Brave developers. In the ad network that is built-in to the browser, sure. But again, there is nothing stopping a competitor to make another ad network, with a similar structure, which displays ads in their own properties. And if were starting now, what do you think would be easier: to get users to be interested in something that can give them more BAT, or something that would give them a different type of "gift card"? > in reality isn't going to be adopted outside of the Brave ecosystem. Why? If no one else realizes that the is possible to use BAT without depending on Brave, then you'd have a self-fulfilling prophecy. But I could easily argue that this is not really true. BAT is already part of the DeFI ecosystem (accepted by MakerDAO as one of the currencies to provide stability to DAI), youtubers and content creators are getting more aware of it, there are already people providing services that accept BAT as payment, there is a guy selling coffee for BAT... Brave does not control any of it directly.
  - waffle_maniac 5y ago
    I’ve donated my earned BAT to NPR, Wikipedia, and GitHub users. You’ve heard of Wikipedia?

rglullis 5y ago

> try to capture the entire stack, with some crypto stuff slapped on top to monetize No. The last part of your sentence is what stops them from being able to do the first. There is absolutely nothing stopping any competitor to set a different ad network that also uses BAT as the payout. There is nothing stopping Facebook (or any other media company actually) to start accepting BAT for payments.

Barrin92 5y ago
there's nothing stopping anyone from taking dollars, what does that have to do with brave's business model? When you use the brave browser, brave takes a share of publishers ad revenue in the bat program, just like Google or Apple do, and publishers who want to participate have to agree with the terms and conditions set by, you'll never guess it, the Brave developers. Whether Apple, Google or Brave pay you in dollars, bitcoin, BAT or sheepskin changes nothing about the fact that they all attempt to generate value by taking control of the distribution channel. The difference of course being that Google and Apple at least pay you well and in dollars rather than a crypto token that has been premined by the company that also happens to run the browser and in reality isn't going to be adopted outside of the Brave ecosystem. Imagine if Amazon started to pay its vendors in Amazon gift cards, that's what Brave is. (everyone is free to accept amazon gift cards, of course!)
- rglullis 5y ago
  > there's nothing stopping anyone from taking dollars, Yes, there is. There is a good part of the world where people can not accept payments in dollars, so the revenue share program wouldn't work. Not to mention the tipping system. If they wanted to do with "real cash", they would have to either find a global partner like Western Union (yuck), or partner with PayPal (double yuck) or become themselves a money transmitter (basically impossible) Granted, what they could've done would be to use another existing token. And they did just that, at first. The first version used BTC. It didn't catch on. It was only later that they did the ICO. It would be nice if they used a stabletoken, but DAI was launched after BAT's ICO, Tether is poison and USDC is centralized. BAT is not ideal, but there was no better alternative at that point in time. > terms and conditions set by, you'll never guess it, the Brave developers. In the ad network that is built-in to the browser, sure. But again, there is nothing stopping a competitor to make another ad network, with a similar structure, which displays ads in their own properties. And if were starting now, what do you think would be easier: to get users to be interested in something that can give them more BAT, or something that would give them a different type of "gift card"? > in reality isn't going to be adopted outside of the Brave ecosystem. Why? If no one else realizes that the is possible to use BAT without depending on Brave, then you'd have a self-fulfilling prophecy. But I could easily argue that this is not really true. BAT is already part of the DeFI ecosystem (accepted by MakerDAO as one of the currencies to provide stability to DAI), youtubers and content creators are getting more aware of it, there are already people providing services that accept BAT as payment, there is a guy selling coffee for BAT... Brave does not control any of it directly.
- waffle_maniac 5y ago
  I’ve donated my earned BAT to NPR, Wikipedia, and GitHub users. You’ve heard of Wikipedia?