Airdrops are a great way to earn free crypto. But even better than a temporary airdrop is a crypto giveaway without a deadline.
That’s what Brave offers. Brave, headed by co-founder and CEO Brendan Eich (creator of the JavaScript programming language and former Mozilla CEO), is a privacy-focused browser with utility tokens built into its system. You can earn basic attention tokens (BATs) as long as you use the browser.
But before I tell you how you can earn BATs, you should know a little more about the problems Brave is attacking and how it hopes to solve them.
A Flawed System
The Brave team believes we’re part of an increasingly flawed and corrupt digital industry. One where users like you and me are taken advantage of through a lack of privacy. According to Brave, large media sites can have as many as 70 trackers, and malware has increased 132% in a single year. This lack of privacy hurts publishers as well as users, with Google and Facebook hogging 73% of ad dollars and 99% of growth. And advertisers suffer from poor targeting, which hurts their return on investment.
Brave’s Solution
Brave aims to improve the experience of users, publishers and advertisers by offering privacy. The Brave browser automatically blocks trackers and ads that learn about users without their knowledge.
Brave users can either use the browser in its default ad-blocking form or opt to receive fewer ads that are more targeted to their interests and have a significantly lower risk of malware. Publishers using Brave get more revenue since fraud and middlemen are reduced. And advertisers receive improved data on their spending.
How to Earn BATs
Users who opt to receive ads will get 70% of the revenue generated by the ads they see in the form of BATs. (Geek note: Brave monitors user attention in an anonymous manner. It then uses this information to reward the publishers using BATs. Users’ private data never leaves their devices, guaranteeing privacy.)
Users, in turn, use their BATs to reward content creators. The browser default is set to give users’ BATs to their favorite and most-visited sites at the end of each month.
The company plans to eventually let users exchange BATs for rewards like hotel rooms and restaurant vouchers. And users will someday be able to convert their BATs to fiat currency through exchanges like Coinbase.
Why We Like It
Protecting our online privacy is a powerful idea… an idea whose time has come. We spend more and more of our daily lives online, and we have less and less control over who gets our data and what they do with it. That should concern everybody.
Brave has a way out of this horrible mess. It offers all parties involved a much higher level of privacy thanks to improved client-side integrity, transparency via its open-source nature and the use of cryptography.
Though some users will want to use the browser just for its ad-blocking capabilities, it offers so much more than that. Brave has been testing ads since January, and more than 40% of desktop users have been opting in to its limited ad option. Once fully deployed, Brave and BATs should provide an effective solution for many problems plaguing digital advertising.
How to Begin Using Brave
At the moment, you can get the Brave browser for macOS, Windows or Linux. Download the browser from the Brave website and go from there. You can also find Coinbase tutorials on getting started with Brave and earning BATs.
Important Notes
Never give anyone your password or private keys. No legitimate airdrop or cryptocurrency firm will ask for that stuff.
Never reuse your email or exchange passwords. Always use unique, random passwords. Write them down and store them somewhere safe. We also recommend setting up a separate email account for airdrops.
Good investing,
Andy Gordon
Co-Founder, First Stage Investor