Cannot verify wallet on long-used PC (but never verified Uphold). Shows "Disconnected"

[AristoKitty]

I’ve been running Brave browser on a PC (Win7) for years, but never set up a wallet. Long ago, I did begin to set up an Uphold wallet, but balked when it demanded something (photo ID, perhaps? Long time ago, so I don’t recall exactly). So I never finished verifying that Uphold wallet.

Now when I finally try to set that up, it is not possible. The situation is confusing. My guess at the most salient points are:

(1) There is no triangle BAT symbol in the URL bar, which all the Brave help text says there should be.

(2) I can get to Brave Rewards page by MainMenu->BraveRewards. The display shows “Disconnected” in the top-left corner and at bottom “Your Brave wallet is powered by Uphold (verify)”.

Screen shot:

(3) If I click on the “verify” link, it fails. The browser opens to URL “wallet.uphold.com/authorize…” and I can login and click on the “Authorize” button. HOWEVER, that only presents an error dialog that says,

“You need a verified wallet to Login /
You need a minimum of 15 BAT to create an Uphold wallet. Please try again after you have verified your wallet with Uphold.”

(4) If I click on “Disconnected” I get the exact same behavior as clicking on “verify” (see #3 above).

I am thus stuck, with no way to move forward.

(5) There is apparently no “update” command to get a newer version of Brave.
Indeed, I’m not sure how old my version is. “About Brave” yields this text:

Nearly up to date! Relaunch Brave to finish updating. Private windows won’t reopen.

Version 1.25.72 Chromium: 91.0.4472.101 (Official Build) (64-bit)

I did download a new version of Brave, but canceled the install for fear that it would wipe out my locally-stored BAT. Perhaps this is the origin of the above introductory “Nearly up to date!” ???

How can I get Brave Rewards running properly? How can I verify Uphold (or use a different wallet)? Will installing a newly-downloaded version of Brave wipe out my earned BAT, which I gather is only stored locally, so far?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Saoiray]

@AristoKitty Well, there’s a lot of confusion really. For example, your one Brave Rewards thing looks like what we see in iOS, where it mentions iOS transferring rewards. I haven’t ever seen that option on desktop or Android. So that is a bit confusing.

But then on to the rest, go look at About Brave and advise which version you’re using. It does need to be the most recent, so good to check. You can safely update your browser without losing but you can’t uninstall or w/e as it will erase as you mentioned. If you’re nervous about it at all, you can move your entire /Brave folder from Windows onto a flash drive or something as a backup before you do anything. As long as you have all of that, you won’t lose your BAT. But it does need to be updated to the most recent.

[AristoKitty]

Well, the problem has changed. Not solved, but changed.

As noted above, I had downloaded the newest version of Brave, but had canceled the install for fear of losing stored BAT. Well – I did absolutely nothing, thinking that today I would do a backup of the Brave folder on Windows, to a USB, as you had suggested. HOWEVER, today I booted up & launched Brave and – Voila, much to my surprise, the downloaded Brave update had installed itself. So, I’m now running the latest (March 10) build – “Version 1.36.112 Chromium: 99.0.4844.51 (Official Build) (64-bit)”.

HOWEVER, my wallet problems are not solved. Only changed.

There is still no triangle BAT symbol showing on the URL line.
There IS now a wallet symbol showing.
I now get this display when I open Brave Rewards.

So I’m not sure if the old BAT are lost. I’m not sure if the 6 or so months of unclaimed BAT are lost.

If I click on “Logged Out” and then pick “Login to your uphold account”, then it brings me to an “authorize” dialog – and it already knows that I’m logged in. Clicking on “authorize” now yields a different error: “Error: You need a verified wallet to log in / Please try again after you have completed ID verification on Uphold.”

Clicking on the new wallet symbol brings me to Brave’s own “Welcome to the new Brave wallet… GetStarted / Restore”. That was not there, before.

I could just go to Uphold.com/login and see what happens. I started that, and got to where it asked me for my full name, birthdate, and SSN. That’s probably where I stopped, when I initially started to set it up a year ago.

BTW, I saw that I started using Brave in Dec 2019. Then started to create an Uphold wallet in Feb 2021, but balked at the demanded verification info. Now here we are in Mar 2022.

Well, honestly, this is not worth my time. I’m probably just going to punt & go back to a nice ad-free experience. Sad to lose the BAT, though.

[Saoiray]

@AristoKitty

There is still no triangle BAT symbol showing on the URL line.

Do a favor and check brave://settings/appearance

As you’ll see the arrows I drew in blue (well, hopefully you see them), but there’s a toggle where you can select to show the icon or not. It’s possible you have this turned off and it’s why you’re not seeing it there.

@AristoKitty

“Error: You need a verified wallet to log in / Please try again after you have completed ID verification on Uphold.”

So this part kind of makes sense as you mentioned you never sent your ID and stuff to them. If you went to link it to Uphold, it would still need you to complete KYC/AML which means sending over all the documents they need. This isn’t because companies want it but is because governments are requiring it. So you’d have to get authorized with Uphold and make sure your profile contains your exact residential address and other personal information. You can’t link Brave and Uphold until both are done.

@AristoKitty

Clicking on the new wallet symbol brings me to Brave’s own “Welcome to the new Brave wallet… GetStarted / Restore”. That was not there, before.

Correct, that’s something they added not long ago. Brave Wallet is completely different from Brave Rewards and they can’t be linked together. It’s one of the things I touch on in the FAQ I wrote a little while back, if you want to check it out at -Retired- PSA: User FAQ - Support & Answers

If you think you might be using Brave to buy, sell, or trade cryptocurrency in the future and you make the wallet, be sure you save your recovery phrase in very safe place. This is because Brave Wallet isn’t synced and if you lose it, you’d lose everything associated with your wallet. So it’s very important.

@AristoKitty

So I’m not sure if the old BAT are lost. I’m not sure if the 6 or so months of unclaimed BAT are lost.

I’m not quite certain either. It’s also possible that it tried to send to your Uphold that was linked before, but as said above…if so, you need to submit documentation to them. I’m also not sure if you’re going to feel comfortable doing that now or where you stand.

Either way, you’ll probably want to send a DM to @Mattches and @steeven advising them of your situation. If you complete your sign-up with Uphold, you’ll want to tell the two of them you would like them to check if you’ll be receiving that BAT or if they can tell what happened to it. If you don’t want to provide documentation, advise them how you started in the past but didn’t realize it might stay connected. Could they make sure BAT didn’t go to Uphold and see if they have any way for it to arrive in your account.

When you DM them that, they’ll also need your Wallet ID you find at brave://rewards-internals. They can’t do a single thing for you without the Wallet Info (especially Wallet ID) from that. And you’ll want to share that only with them, don’t post it on the forum or anything else. I say that for security reasons.