In some ways, this looks promising: Maybe in a few years, they'll be supporting many more countries and payment providers. I'm not overly skeptical about Brave being able to become a viable alternative to my current go-to browsers either — though I hope Safari and Firefox will keep ramping up privacy-protecting features, and I think for the purpose of getting Brave Rewards to critical mass, it would be best to provide plug-ins for integrating that functionality with other browsers as well.
But I see one big problem: For a significant amount of media, a browser isn't the most desirable content delivery mechanism. Take Youtube, for example. The web site is great on PC, but on mobile, the native apps are much better. There's no way those will add support for Brave Rewards, and the chances of the browser-based version catching up don't look so good either. Similarly, there's music streaming, podcasts, F2P games …
I don't want to be in a situation where I have to choose between accessing content in the way I prefer and jumping though hoops for the sake of shuffling those precious BATs around.
Equating the value I'd assign to a creator's work with the time I spend on perusing it seems quite iffy, too.
Meanwhile, Patreon already has most of these issues solved; in a super simple way.
I used to be interested in Brave because of their pro-privacy stance. The more I think about that BAT stuff, the less attractive I find the entire project. I can give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they're idealists striving to build an ecosystem where everyone can help to create valuable on-line content, rather than entrepreneurs trying to syphon a portion of existing revenue streams into their accounts. But then I'm inclined to question their competence.
But I see one big problem: For a significant amount of media, a browser isn't the most desirable content delivery mechanism. Take Youtube, for example. The web site is great on PC, but on mobile, the native apps are much better. There's no way those will add support for Brave Rewards, and the chances of the browser-based version catching up don't look so good either. Similarly, there's music streaming, podcasts, F2P games …
I don't want to be in a situation where I have to choose between accessing content in the way I prefer and jumping though hoops for the sake of shuffling those precious BATs around.
Equating the value I'd assign to a creator's work with the time I spend on perusing it seems quite iffy, too.
Meanwhile, Patreon already has most of these issues solved; in a super simple way.
I used to be interested in Brave because of their pro-privacy stance. The more I think about that BAT stuff, the less attractive I find the entire project. I can give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they're idealists striving to build an ecosystem where everyone can help to create valuable on-line content, rather than entrepreneurs trying to syphon a portion of existing revenue streams into their accounts. But then I'm inclined to question their competence.