Brave Software

The Brave web browser can now channel virtual money from its users to people who stream videogame action on Amazon's Twitch service.

Brave announced the Twitch payment support Thursday, a third option alongside payments that can flow to YouTube stars and website operators. Brave blocks ads by default, but users can choose to direct payments in the form of basic attention tokens (BATs) to those who create content. Today, users' BAT wallets are funded with their own money or with promotional giveaways from Brave, but later, the startup plans to let people choose to see online ads that also can provide funds.

It's an early step in Brave's effort to rid the web of some unpleasant parts of the online ad industry. Ads have kept services like Google search and Facebook social networking free, but they also slow down websites, invade privacy, flatten your battery, suck up your monthly network data and in cases deliver malware to your computing devices.

Twitch lets videogamers broadcast their games online. Audience members can watch, chat, subscribe to their favorite gamers' channels and contribute financially.

Along with the Twitch support, Brave also announced a third BAT giveaway worth up to $1 million. This time, it's for Twitch streamers whose Brave promotional efforts attract new users to the web browser. In return, Brave said it'll pay them about $5 worth of BAT for each new user.

BAT is based on cryptocurrency technology called blockchain that lets Brave arrange direct payments among advertisers, publishers and anyone using the browser. Today, that just means payments from users to publishers, but later that should include payments from advertisers to publishers, advertisers to users, and perhaps users to publishers when they want to pay for some premium content.

Publishers, Twitch streamers and YouTubers getting paid in BAT can convert their tokens into regular currency through a Brave partnership with cryptocurrency exchange startup Uphold.

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