What Is Basic Attention Token?

Basic Attention Token is a reward cryptocurrency, which is embedded in the Brave Browser. Brave is not only a browser but an advertisement exchange based on Ethereum blockchain. The project, including BAT token, is a great opportunity for users, publishers, and advertisers to improve the current advertisement situation with minimal disturb content.

The advertising ecosystem is a baffling variety of middlemen and complexity. Users have to watch the ads they are not interested in. Eventually, the advertisement is all about capturing attention and gaining new customers. We all knew the good old formula of good ad: Attention – Interest – Desire – Action (AIDA).

AIDA Principle
AIDA Principle

The internet definitely has improved the marketplace, and many players are taking the advertising pie. However, people do not see the ads that would interest them. Information becomes toxic. And then they appear. The BAT token and Brave Browser was developed to make the most targeting ads with a reward system. How does everything work? Let’s explore the BAT with Changelly!

Basic Attention Token (BAT) Basics

The Brave browser is an open-source, fast, and privacy-focused desktop browser and mobile app. The main feature of the browser is its ability to block any third-party advertisement and any tacking within the user’s network connection. Brave browser loads site 2-8 times faster than Safari and Chrome apps, and twice faster than Chrome desktop version. There is also a problem of site speed due to the amount and size of the advertising on the website.

internet speed among data
Data transferred by Data Elements on random news sites

The system works with Brave-Micropayment ledger, which anonymously captures the user’s attention to reward publishers. There is a chain of user-publisher-advertiser, which is connected by decentralization. Brave ledger system is an open-source Zero-Knowledge Proof scheme. It allows Brave users to make anonymous donations and give tips to publishers. 

The BAT token is a native cryptocurrency of Brave ecosystem. The browser itself is following the data you have surfed to catch all the kind of information you are interested in. Here are the main advantages of each chain participant: 

  • For the user: privacy and security within the Brave ecosystem, improved relevance, token share, ability to ‘mine’ BAT tokens while surfing the internet. 
  • For the publisher: instead of losing the profit and facing a significant amount of fraud, the publishers can reduce fraud chance and raise revenue. The publisher earns BAT tokens too.
  • For the advertiser: facing less fraud while using the Brave browser. Customer attention is cheaper, and the problem of poor targeting can be solved. 

The other developers can use free and open-source infrastructure to develop their BAT-usage cases.

In March 2019, Brave implemented the reward phase. Now users can get BAT tokens for their attention.

Basic Attention Token (BAT) is an open-source, blockchain-based, distributed platform, which works on Ethereum blockchain and uses smart contract technology. This is a native cryptocurrency of Brave ecosystem. BAT crypto is an incentive for all users of the ecosystem. Every Brave participant earns some of BAT cryptocurrency. The users receive BAT tokens for participation in the project. They can donate BAT to publishers or use coin within the network.

Let’s list all kinds of BAT token use cases:

  • BAT cryptocurrency can be used for targeted advertising
  • You can pay with BAT to get access to premium content providers
  • You can also make BAT micropayment to get access to higher quality content
  • To write a comment, the user should make a BAT contribution, as well as for the right to vote and rank comments. This system is similar to thumbs up/thumbs down principle. The payment is required to reduce the number of abusive comments. 
  • Users can pay with BAT tokens within the Brave ecosystem such as receiving of digital goods. 
  • The developers hope that the Brave content ecosystem can be utilized with the game application blockchain sphere.  As a result, BAT tokens can be used as an in-game cryptocurrency. 
  • The users can custom alerts to receive the news and updates information promptly. 

Brave Browser Competitors

The content market is definitely enormous. Here are the main competitors of the Brave platform, their features, and the main differences from Brave.

NameDescriptionDisadvantages
Reddit GoldPremium membership program to improve the Reddit experienceNo blockchain as well as no monetize
SteemSocial media blog and platform, which uses blockchainDoes not have a blockchain-based digital advertisement structure
BlendlePlatform providing users with a collection of stories based on their preferenceDoes not have any reward system
GoogleSearch engine company, which makes its profit mostly from digital advertisingUsers are unaware of their privacy; does not have reward token

Brave Team

The company was founded in 2016 by Brendan Eich. Brave Software has its headquarter in San Francisco, USA. The list of team members is absolutely amazing. Just look at these personas. 

Brendan Eich

Brendan Eich is a founder of Brave browser and BAT cryptocurrency. He is such an important person because he created JavaScript. Before the company foundation, Eich stands behind Mozilla Firefox browser creation. 

Brian Bondy is a co-founder of Brave Software. Now he is in charge of browser engineering. Before entering the company, Bondy worked at Khan Academy, Mozilla, and Evernote. 

Yan Zhu

Yan Zhu is in charge of security and privacy engineering. This lady is listed in Forbes ‘30 under 30’. Two years before entering the Brave Software, she worked for Yahoo. Impressive, right?

The team also consists of Ben Livshits, David Temkin, Brian Brown, Brad Richter, Catherine Corre, Holli Bohren, Johnny Ryan, Brian Johnson, Brian Clifton, Anthony Tseng, Sriram Venkataram, Marshall Rose, Jon Sampson, Sergey Zhukovsky, Ryan Watson, Cezar Augusto, Luke Mulks, Alex Wykoff, James Mudgett, Nejc Zdovc, Joel Reis, Peter Snyder, Tom Lowenthal, AmirSaber Sharifi, Bartlomiej Lechowski, and others. 

Basic Attention Token (BAT) Value

The Brave company decided to get an investment through the ICO process. BAT ICO took place on May 29, 2017. The target amount was $24 million. However, Basic Attention Token drew the attention and raised $35 million in 30 seconds. During the ICO, 1 BAT was sold for $0.3. The largest BAT coin purchase during ICO was equal to 20,000 ETH (=$4.7 million). The founder of Brave Software, Brendan Eich, was pleased with the sale.

One billion of Basic Attention Token was available for crowdsale. The cryptocurrency total supply is 1,500,000,000 BAT. The BAT coins were distributed as follows:

  • 70% BAT Development
  • 20% User growth pool
  • 10% Max investment goal 

As for August 12, 2019, the BAT market cap is $260,737,648. The BAT token is on the 33rd place among all cryptocurrencies. 

Now BAT token price is $0.204224. The highest rate was captured on January 9, 2018; Basic Attention Token was worth $0.980702. The lowest price BAT cryptocurrency tested on July 16, 2017. It was just $0.066209.

BAT price chart
Basic Attention Token (BAT) Price Chart

Let’s discover all the ups and downs of the Basic Attention Token price. In the following table, you can see the highest and the lowest points of the BAT coin price chart tested through its history. 

DatePriceReason for price rise
January 9, 2018$0.864405Ethfinex listed some ERC20 tokens, including Basic Attention Token (BAT)
March 18, 2018$0.159486Undefined
May 2, 2018$0.504239Brave signed the partnership with Dow Jones media
November 7, 2018$0.0341205Coinbase added BAT on its platform
August 10, 2019$0.198839Current price. Price continues to fall

Brave Browser appreciation is not enough for BAT rise. Well, it’s an ideal time for investors to buy BAT because its price is compromisable. Yes, the coin price is falling now, but the cryptocurrency market is unpredictable. 

Brave/Basic Attention Token Roadmap

The company publishes and updates the roadmap on the GitHub page. Old milestones, as well as a previous roadmap, is available here. We just want to highlight some upcoming events of Brave and BAT development. 

  • Ongoing work for Brave Core Android builds
  • New work in social tipping
  • Ethereum HD wallet support
  • Ad-block exceptions to be disabled by default and have UI asking to turn on when it is first detected (todo design)
  • Add the ability to have social media login options into the Brave shields panel
  • Add support for more locales
  • Sync v2
  • Speedreader
  • Dark mode for content
  • Playlist
  • BYOW Rewards

Basic Attention Token Latest News

The Brave Internet browser with advanced privacy features has completed a beta test of a feature that allows you to send donations to various online services, in particular, Twitter.

Users will be able to configure sending one-time or regular donations to their favorite authors in Basic Attention Tokens (BAT). Thus, browser developers intend to stimulate the creation of useful content.

Twitter and Brave browser users took advantage of the situation. They remember that Donald Trump is not a fan of cryptocurrencies, and, frankly speaking, he is absolutely against them. However, now he has some BAT tokens, whether he wants it or not. Twitter users tipped Trump BAT cryptocurrency. Now the president of the United States officially owns cryptocurrency. Here is a new mem. 

Basic Attention Token (BAT) Wallets

Since Basic Attention Token (BAT) is an ERC-20 token, it is compatible with Ethereum wallets. Let’s list some of them.

How to get Basic Attention Token (BAT)?

The BAT token mining concept lies in the principle of the browser. There are no unique algorithms, which will help to get the BAT coins. Users just need to download the Brave browser and enable the Brave Rewards function. Publishers can get their BAT cryptocurrency by the creation of the Brave Rewards account so that they will become a varified Brave Publisher. 

You can also earn some BAT tokens through the Coinbase platform. Learn about the Brave platform and receive BATs. You can earn $1 (in BAT equivalent) for watching an educational video, and $7 in case you start using the Brave. 

Please, mind the information, that BAT does not have any airdrop. Users can get ±30 BAT to try the Brave Reward system. The Brave browser has so-called mining and BAT faucet in its principle. The team members recommend avoiding any scam websites, which promote the BAT faucet and airdrop.

You can also buy Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) at some exchanges listed below:

ExchangeETHUSDBTC
Binance
Bittrex
CoinEx
HitBTC

Basic Attention Token Summary

Nowadays, digital advertising is very promising. However, due to the use of ad blockers, like AdBlock, the ads sphere is damaged for 7.2 billion dollars. According to rough estimates, the AdBlock program is installed on 600 million devices, and this dramatically distorts the information about the number of users that the ad reaches.

With the Brave browser and BAT, token publishers get more revenue because intermediaries and fraud are not acceptable within the network. Users get high-quality targeted ads. And advertisers get more information about their expenses. 

Unclaimed and intrusive offers, fraudulent and malicious links are excluded. At the same time, the Brave browser guarantees high data processing speed and system performance. The idea and yet the performance is awe-inspiring. However, the BAT token price is not. It’s impossible to predict any success or failure due to the unforeseeable cryptocurrency market. Probably we’ll see.

Disclaimer: This article about Basic Attention Token (BAT) should not be considered as offering trading recommendations. The cryptocurrency market suffers from high volatility and occasional arbitrary movements. 

Any investor should research multiple viewpoints and be familiar with all local regulations before committing to an investment.