Hello, I know I dont post here as often but I wanted to make peace of a argumentable topic in my head which is: Should I trust Uphold with my ID card? I read some bad stuff about the company and I wanted to know whats your opinion on it?
I don’t know enough to comment, but I’m curious what bad stuff you’ve heard, and if it’s warranted. I don’t want to defame a Brave partner, but if there are uncertainties, they should be discussed. Can you post a link to what you’ve read, or summarize it for discussion? I have seen others question the trustworthiness, but haven’t seen any specific critiques other than people taking issue with their Anti Money Laundering practices, which are regulatory compliance issues.
I heard pretty much from this topic: Why we need Uphold?
Thank you. I have read similar complaints about the KYC process, and even that some users experienced issues with the verification process. I guess what it boils down to is regulatory compliance. Brave Publishers are essentially businesses, which are getting paid by the ecosystem and their patrons. The money being anonymously earned via ads needs to exit the platform somewhere, and this creates a regulatory bottleneck because governments around the world have rules about paying businesses (and everyday individuals) money, so they can reap their taxes. Ultimately, any custodial organization like Uphold or Coinbase is required by law (in the US and most countries) to record what money was paid to whom if it funnels through their coffers. My assumption is that Brave needs a custodian like Uphold for 3 reasons: 1) to provide wallets not in the custody of Brave in order to free them from over-regulation; 2) to provide some kind of fiat/commodity exchange in order to get your fiat value out of the system (taxable event for most people in the world); 3) to make sure the system isn’t being exploited by cyber criminals, terrorist organizations, or state-sponsored actors like the DPRK
Could all this be done strictly within Brave? Probably, but I believe that would cause the project serious legal harm in many jurisdictions.
I can’t speak to the trust-worthiness of Uphold. I only heard of them and started using their service because of Brave. I view it as a young company that needs to establish a reputation for legitimacy. Coinbase has earned that sort of reputation after several years of service in the crypto community, trying to balance regulatory compliance while respecting privacy. Most of the complaints I’ve read about Uphold simply refer to the loss of anonymity because most crypto users don’t want to sacrifice that, or pay taxes.
Regarding Uphold as a Service: I have been impressed with their exchange offerings, and the ease at which you can move from one asset to another, including crypto pegged to either Silver or Gold. That’s huge. I am very critical of their policy of banning users for life without explanation, though. That one user’s quote, allegedly from them, about having an inflexible KYC protocol will ultimately have to change (in my opinion) if they want to gain mass adoption.