That’s where you’re slightly off. We don’t get BAT in the browser. We get vBAT but it calls it BAT. You can’t take or use it for anything except tipping. That’s why I keep making the comparison to things like Reward Points or Frequent Flyer Miles. They are not a currency or anything at all. It doesn’t become BAT until it gets to an exchange, such as Uphold or Gemini.
This is only true if Unverified Wallet. If Unverified, you can’t send or receive BAT. It just sits there as points to be awarded and later converted to advertisers and content creators.
Remember, if you can mine something or obtain, you can keep. Just like BAT that’s out on the market can be sent or received by people. You can put it in cold storage and send to others. It can even be kept in places like Brave Wallet. The issue is going from the browser to out and about. For example:
BAT Rewards come in the form of virtual BAT (vBAT) until you verify with an exchange. When you verify with an exchange, your vBAT gets deposited there and converted to real BAT. The step for going to an exchange is required for AML/KYC reasons. We’re looking at the decentralization process for Brave ads rewards as part of Themis
Brave Wallet is a self custody wallet and therefore we cannot currently pay to it for the user rev-share for ads. We would need to KYC/AML your address and may also need a money transmitter license to do so.
For tipping, we are planning to implement on-chain P2P tipping. There are some things to work through including high Ethereum gas fees and no anonymity on Ethereum. After we have Solana support we will likely add this pretty quickly.
And when I have had discussions with people like Brendan Eich, he’s advised they are limited. In one of his Twitter messages regarding things like Themis and suggesting it would let people not worry about KYC/AML or sanctions, he advised:
Themis => decentralized ad buyer performance verification. Doesn’t help with compliance, nothing does. LN doesn’t help, nodes must be licensed MSBs or MTLs which means they will have to KYC for AML and sanctions
The idea is they are stressing that they are stuck in a regulatory bubble and are limited. I’m not going to pretend to know enough for the specifics. I’m guessing since it’s all being used as part of a big business plan and isn’t just an independent crypto like many other types of tokens or coins tend to be, there’s more to it. All I can do is relay what I’ve been told according to people who work for Brave and bits that others Users who are proficient on all things crypto have advised.