I am a new user to the Brave browser which I just started using tonight. I understand that somehow I am rewarded BAT for viewing ads over time but I’m confused by what I see in Brave Rewards…
There is the option to fund the wallet with BAT and then there is “auto-contribute” feature which looks like it will pay out BAT to sites I visit? So I am in fact PAYING to browse myself and not the other way round?
I suspect I have that wrong somehow but how do you extract BAT and convert it to USD once you have it? It says on this page (https://brave.com/faq/#anonymous-contributions) that the BAT wallet is unidirectional and so you can’t transfer out the BAT?
Please help I’m very confused and every other page on BAT/Brave I’ve read has not helped to be honest.
You get paid to view ads (or will, once everything is up and running, since this is still a beta). However, you can also pay sites out of that BAT to help them provide content. Normally sites run advertising and get paid by the advertiser. However, Brave blocks advertising that tracks you and instead shows you ads that are general to, say, your geographic area over those ads. Brave then lets you give money to sites, to help them maintain their content while protecting you from tracking across the internet.
Thanks that sort of helps. However it still basically sounds almost like a charity to me? As a user I’m giving money to sites to provide me adverts because I don’t like the adverts which mainstream advertisers provide?
Full disclosure - I got into this because I wanted to invest in BAT and so I went on the website and downloaded the brave browser then the first thing which was popped up was Brave Reweards. I saw a wallet where I could transfer in funds so I transferred in ~$300 worth of bitcoin. So I now have that much worth of BAT tokens but now I’m panicking that there’s no way to get my money back out and all I can do is give it away for basically nothing in return lol?
One way to look at it is as charity. Another way is to support the sites that provide content you like so that they can continue to do so without those sites having to shutter or to have users pay to view their content. I believe you’ll be able to choose which sites receive payment.
It’s also voluntary. You don’t have to use the browser for that purpose.
As for how the funds operate, @Mattches or @eljuno or someone else at Brave, maybe you can comment further?
Brave Rewards is an opt-in anonymous contribution system that provide a way for Brave users to contribute to publishers by rewarding them BAT. https://brave.com/faq/#what-is-brave-rewards
You don’t need to “pay” to use and browse with Brave. But Brave do encourage it’s users to support publishers via Brave Rewards. Like I said above, it’s opt-in. If you don’t want, then you can use Brave as an ad-blocker browser, for free. https://brave.com/faq/#do-i-have-to-pay
Yes, for now the browser wallet (the wallet that used for Brave Rewards) is unidirectional.
Brave team is working on two-ways wallet, so you can withdrawal you own-funding fund and soon your BAT from Brave Ads. https://brave.com/faq/#refund-money