More than 10 million people use Brave Browser each month – but there are concerns that only a handful have wallets holding BAT rewards.

Brave Browser is a great experience on mobile or desktop – it blocks ads, loads pages 2x-6x faster than competing browsers, it looks pretty, and users have been flocking to it in droves.

The unique selling point, of course, is that it enables users to earn Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) for viewing ads.

There’s just one small problem.

Etherscan shows there are just 221,754 BAT wallets in existence – that’s just 2.2% of the total number of Brave monthly users and even less compared with the total number of downloads.

Brave tells Micky there are another 167,000 verified wallets on the Uphold exchange platform, which brings the total to 388,754, or 3.88% of monthly users, who have control of their BAT.

While it’s early days yet, that still seems low considering they’re giving away free money.

Some bag holders are concerned the focus has shifted to the Brave Browser at the expense of Brave Rewards and the value of BAT.

You have my Basic Attention, now please explain

Crypto Twitter’s Journeyto100k (a big BAT supporter who has earned $21.50 worth of BAT in a couple of months) is concerned.

“Just curious how Brave browser has 10 million users, but there is only 221,754 $BAT addresses on Etherscan. I would imagine everyone on Brave should have a wallet? I hope adoption of $BAT is pushed more in the near future…”

.@BrendanEich @BraveSampson Just curious how Brave browser has 10 million users, but there is only 221,754 $BAT addresses on Etherscan. I would imagine everyone on Brave should have a wallet? I hope adoption of $BAT is pushed more in the near future… — Journey to 100k ???? (@Journeyto100k_) December 15, 2019

Like XRP holders and Ripple, or VET holders and VeChain, he’s worried Brave Browser is taking off while the token isn’t.

“The problem I see most often in the crypto space is the project using their crypto to raise funds and launch their products, but then there is a lack of utility and adoption for the token once the product is done. The company is making a profit, but the ones who invested aren’t.”

Twitter user @almight18 agreed: “I think they have forgotten about $BAT , they just focused on brave the browser and that’s it.”

1.3 million have turned on Brave Rewards

CEO and co-founder Brendan Eich said that Etherscan underestimates the total number of wallets.

“We can’t force people to use BAT and would not, but also, we use Uphold offchain for > 1.3M active wallets that won’t show up on Etherscan as having nonzero balances.”

The 1.3 million wallets are created automatically on Uphold whenever a user turns on Brave Rewards – which logically means there are 1.3 million people now participating in the scheme (including this author who, in the interest of full disclosure, has made $2.21 in BAT).

These automatically created Uphold wallets enable users to tip other users or content creators with BAT, however, users can’t actually trade or withdraw from these Uphold wallets until they’ve been KYC-verified.

And again, to avoid cut and paste or dipping into thread loss of context, the signup is optional and per 1.3m actives most users do not sign up, they get to give back. The default. — BrendanEich (@BrendanEich) December 16, 2019

The number of BAT wallets

Brave says that 180,000 Brave Rewards users have started the process of creating their own account on Uphold with 147,000 submitting ID and 87,000 approved.

Some of these overlap with the wallets of content creators who accept BAT. There are 210,000 creator wallets, 80,000 of whom are verified.

At present, Uphold has 33,866,311 BAT in assets, which translates to around $6,217,407 worth or 2.4% of the total circulating supply.

Eich told Micky that Brave needs an intermediary like Uphold as it has too many transactions to be able to use Ethereum on-chain due to gas fees and because most large publishers have zero capability to accept cryptocurrency directly.

Concerns over Brave Rewards

JourneyTo100K said he was concerned the project isn’t providing a compelling reason to hold the token and that the project needs to do a better job of encouraging users to turn on Brave Rewards.

“With 10 million active users, I would expect a larger % to be using BAT. Looking through the Brave browser, there is only 1 link that I can find to learn more about BAT and this site doesn’t even explain all the utility and options.”

Eich said the team was working hard to get more users switching on Brave Rewards.

“We are working diligently on incentives for user to enable Brave Rewards. It’s a hot topic.”

We are working diligently on incentives for user to enable Brave Rewards. It's a hot topic. — BrendanEich (@BrendanEich) December 15, 2019