I just got an email from Gemini indicating that Gemini no longer supports BAT in Canada. They will sell all my tokens for fiat on September 29th. I can no longer receive BAT in my account. How can I continue to collect Brave rewards if Gemini doesn’t support BAT?
What are other Canadians doing? Dropping Brave? Can my rewards be deposited to a private wallet?
Original email from Gemini:
We’re reaching out to let you know of some important changes that will impact your Gemini account.
As part of our Canadian licensing requirements, Gemini will now only support the following tokens: BTC, ETH, LTC, and BCH. You’ve been identified as a customer who holds a balance of a token that is now restricted due to this regulatory change, and in light of this change, all other tokens will be delisted from Gemini Canada.
That being said, you can take action on any restricted tokens by:
Withdrawing them to a private wallet,
Trading them for a non-restricted token (BTC, ETH, LTC, or BCH),
Selling them into USD, or CAD by 9/27/23
Furthermore, any unsupported tokens that haven’t already been transferred or sold by 9/27/23 will be automatically sold for CAD on your behalf.
This decision was made in partnership with Canadian regulators. We appreciate your patience as we continue to work with regulators to provide the safest experience for our customers in Canada and around the world.
You’re not alone
And I think it’s the end off reward on Gemini for all Canadian users.
I will try another wallet. And don’t forget to test fees before transferring your bat to another wallet. In Canada between 2 and 6 AM fees seem to be lower.
I changed to uphold but they don’t support Canadian bank accounts!! LOL! They told me I need a european bank account, like that is any help. What is Brave doing about this? Why can’t my BAT be deposited to my own private wallet?
Looking like the end of the line for BAT and Brave for me.
@baconology there are other options on the way, just not sure of when they will arrive. In the meanwhile, I want you to remember that you could still receive BAT to Uphold and transfer to another account to withdraw if you’d like. But you are right that it seems Uphold doesn’t let Canadians link bank accounts.
And yeah, I get it. Things are getting to be a bit of a pain in Canada. Such as you’re seeing Gemini become highly restrictive and Binance also pulled out of your country.
We’re waiting for the BAT Roadmap to come out and for more information to be shared after, but I do know Brendan Eich has been saying that on-chain BAT payouts without needing a custodial partner is in the works. Big issue is nobody has been able to give an ETA for it.
About BAT Reward on the Brave wallet, I remember reading somewhere that BAT Rewards are not real BAT and Brave need an exchange to swap these virtual bat into “real BAT” on the ethereal network.
You can withdraw your BAT from Gemini or UpHold to your wallet (even the Brave wallet) but there are fees associated to these transfers.
Yes, any BAT you earned before February 2023 without having connected to Gemini / Uphold is called virtual BAT. They can be comparable as Loyalty Points since if you don’t connect to the custodial partners supported by Brave, your vBAT actually has no value, atleast on the blockchain since they are not there yet.
Once you connect, your vBAT is converted to on-chain BAT which has a value unlike the vBAT.
Your vBAT can only be converted into on-chain BAT by connecting to Uphold / Gemini. You can then transfer them to your self - custody wallet.
Hey man. Currently Gemini is having issues with connecting to Brave Rewards. It’s an issue from Gemini side and Brave is working with them to have it sorted.
More details at
Where is this wallet located?