Basic Attention Token (BAT) is a cryptocurrency that is more obscure or lesser known to the general masses in the digital currency space. Basic Attention Token is currently only ranked 50 (as of 1/2/2018) among all cryptocurrencies according to CoinMarketCap. If you know me and spoke to me, you would know I tend to stray away from lesser known cryptocurrencies that aren’t proven yet. However, in my eyes BAT was an exception .

What made me an early adapter of the BAT project is in large part due to the solid developer team behind the token and because of how much untapped potential there is in the advertising industry. The BAT Project has serious potential to redefine the very massive and lucrative advertising space while addressing many of the inefficiencies and issues with the current systems in place.

What is a Basic Attention Token?

Basic Attention Token is a decentralized, digital advertising platform built on the Ethereum blockchain. According to the BAT Team, “The Basic Attention Token can be used to obtain a variety of advertising and attention-based services on the Brave platform, as it is exchanged between publishers, advertisers, and users.” In other words, the main purpose of the token is to help gauge or measure user engagement more accurately. As a result, the BAT Project incorporates the token as a form of currency in their digital advertising ecosystem as a point system that rewards publishers, users, or advertisers.

If you are not familiar with the current digital advertising ecosystem consisting of publishers, users, and advertisers, Brendan Eich, the co-founder of Mozilla and Firefox and creator of Javascript, does a great job in explaining and breaking down the current inefficiencies in the advertising industry and how the BAT ecosystem would work to address them.

How the BAT ecosystem works

Why the BAT Project has great potential

You can view the updated 2018 BAT Roadmap. Additionally, it is always wise to read the white paper as well before investing.

My thoughts about the BAT Project

The advertising industry is a very lucrative market. The fact that Google and Facebook heavily relies upon ad revenue should excite every BAT investor. It is their number one source of revenue. If content publishers or advertisers begin to follow suit, the potential gains will be massive. And it isn’t outside the realm of possibility too because there are many reasons for why an advertiser or publisher, or even an user would migrate over.

I have been well accustomed to the digital advertising space for sometime now as a user, advertiser, and even a publisher. As it stands now, many content publishers simply follow where the money is as long as ads aren’t disruptive to their audience. From a publisher perspective, there is no real loyalty to an ad network unless it is for convenience. This works in favor of BAT because it means content publishers will be open to trying out the ad network. Users and advertisers may be more harder to grasp. However, getting major content publishers will be the first step for BAT. Advertisers will take notice and adapt because the BAT ecosystem favors advertisers in terms of cost efficiency and is centered around user engagement. Even if advertisers and users are hesitant in joining the network, their hand will be forced to at least notice by the sheer number of content publishers using the BAT ecosystem. Verified publishers of BAT has not yet been disclosed. However, recently the Reddit community published an unofficial list of BAT publishers. It is a win-win situation in which all parties benefit from the BAT ecosystem.

BAT Project’s biggest challenge

The biggest obstacle in my mind for the BAT project is how well users will adapt to using their Brave web/mobile browser seeing how long it took Google Chrome to take substantial market share from Internet Explorer. However, that is only one factor of the equation in BAT’s ecosystem and I am willing to give the BAT team the benefit of the doubt. If there is a team to get it done, it would be a team backed by Founders Fund, Foundation Capital, Propel Venture Partners, Pantera Capital, DCG, Danhua Capital, and Huiyin Blockchain Venture among others. Even Brian Armstrong, Co-Founder and CEO of Coinbase had this to say, “exactly the sort of token [BAT] we’d like to support on Coinbase and GDAX over the coming year.”

I have personally invested in the Basic Attention Token project for well over half a year now when prices were constantly ranging between $0.15-$0.25. Currently, a token is valued at $0.61 as of 1/2/2018. I honestly think BAT is an undervalued gem that will make major strides. The developer team behind the project is way to solid to not see a fraction of the success that other coins are receiving. 2018 will be their year.