Basic Attention Token
Basic Attention Token (BAT) is a digital currency which is closely tied to the Chromium-based Brave Web Browser. It is traded against Bitcoin and USD on more fringe exchanges like HitBTC, Binance and Bittrex as well as some bigger and cleaner exchanges like Kraken and Coinbase. BAT is a token on the Ethereum platform; it does not have it's own blockchain.
Supply
The total BAT supply will be 1,500,000,000 BAT and the circulating supply as of November 2019 is 1,356,449,189 BAT/. That is a lot of BAT currency kicking around.
1,000,000,000 BAT of the total supply was sold in an initial coin offering on May 31, 2017. The offered amount was sold for 56,250 Ethereum ($35M USD at the time) in a brief 30 seconds. The remaining 500,000,000 BAT was kept by Brave Software, Inc. 300,000 BAT was allocated to a "user growth pool" which was distributed in December, 2017.
Use and Adoption
The Brave browser's tipping feature.
BAT is closely tied to the Brave Web Browser's Brave Rewards feature. Users of that browser can earn some tiny amounts of it by viewing in-browser advertisements. 70% of in-browser advertisement revenue goes to users who see it unless the advertisement is placed on a website participating in Brave's "Verified Publisher" program. 70% of the revenue from those advertisements go to the publisher, 15% is awarded to the person viewing them and 15% is pocketed by the Brave corporation[1]. BAT earned by users either be kept or sold or given as a tip to website owners.
Fees
The fees for sending or using BAT tokens around can be very high.
BAT earnings from the Brave Web Browser rewards can only be "withdrawn" to a London-based service called "Uphold". The fees for withdrawing BAT token from that "Upload" service to a wallet or exchange vary depending on the Etherium networks gas fees. The withdraw fee is, as of August 2020, between 20 and 30 BAT per transaction depending on the time of day. That works out to somewhere between $5.27 and $7.9 per transaction at an exchange price of 0.2638 BAT/USD.
Exchanges
BAT can be traded against other currencies at:
- HitBTC
- Binance (cryptowat.ch chart)
- Bittrex
- Kraken
- Coinbase
Perhaps some others. It is not a currency you can expect to see listed on any random digital currency exchange; there are far fewer digital currency exchanges listing it than there are exchanges not listing it.
Footnotes
- ↑ basicattentiontoken.org: New online advertising model upends current system with 70% revenue share to users and privacy by design, January 15th 2019
Enable comment auto-refresher