Earlier this week, the privacy focused, advertising industry disrupting Brave browser/Basic Attention Token project announced a partnership with TAP Network which will allow you to spend BAT (Basic Attention Tokens) with over 250,000 Brands around the world, including Hilton Hotel and gift cards to Uber, Nike, Amazon, Starbucks, Apple and more, possibly making it the most imminently usable cryptocurrency in the world. Amazing news! Related article

This news shows that BAT is likely to be among the first cryptocurrencies--if not the first--that will be widely used. Why? Because it's the first one with a strong immediate use case that has a model which makes adoption simple and easy for the average non-crypto experienced user. Think about it. You have a sleek and uncomplicated wallet built right into your browser. Onboarding couldn't be simpler. No need to register with and learn how to use a crypto exchange. No need to buy any tokens or mess with 'gas.' Who wants to have to buy money in order to spend money anyway? You earn tokens by opting in to seeing ads while you browse the internet, and have full control over how much, and even what type, of advertising to allow.

After earning tokens, you can use them to tip your favorite content creators/websites, a function which they've made incredibly user friendly (there's even an auto-contribute function which can be turned on and off, and even when it's on, you get a chance to tweak how much you want to go to each site at the end of the month), purchase premium online content from sites such as The Washington Post, Vimeo and countless other current and future partners, donate to your favorite charity, buy popular gift cards, and make hotel reservations--all right there from within your own browser with just a few clicks.

It doesn't stop there. Brave reports:"The average mobile browser user pays as much as $23 a month in data charges to download ads and trackers — that’s $276 a year. Brave blocks ads and trackers, so you don’t pay for them." Many users also report longer battery life with the mobile browser as all the scripts for ad tracking require CPU usage. With the user interface being so uncomplicated, not needing to purchase any tokens, and with the browser being faster and more secure than any other, who wouldn't want to use it?

Helmed by JavaScript creator and Mozilla Firefox cofounder Brendan Eich, BAT ultimately aims to disrupt the current monolithic online advertising structures ruled by the likes of Google and Facebook, to a more user centered content-quality driven model. No longer motivated solely by getting clicks for the sake of ad revenue, content creators will finally be rewarded for--as well as judged by--the merit of their actual content. This helps disincentivise the ridiculous sensationalist click bait-y environment so prevalent online today, and encourages more genuine thoughtful content. And in a world where people are increasingly wary of how little control they have over how their data is used, the Brave model is bound to have strong appeal.

To sum up. Fast, secure, private, ad free by default. Opportunities for content creators/website owners to earn directly from their viewers. Opportunity for viewers to opt in to ads and earn widely spendable tokens in return. Your personal data not being sold to the highest bidder and endlessly enriching monolithic corporations all the while. Sounds like a recipe for success to me!

Two more genius moves by BAT are 1) Making bookmarks from Chrome and other browsers easy to import into Brave (Chrome Extensions are also available as the browser is actually based on Chrome) and 2) providing free token grants to new users to introduce them to the platform.

You can download it here now for an immediate $5 in token grants and the opportunity to earn BAT through Brave Rewards when it launches soon.

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