This month has been absolutely mind blowing for anyone that follows the BRAVE Browser or the Basic Attention Token as there have been two key announcements that have sent the price of BAT skyrocketing. In this post, I'll discuss how the Grayscale BAT Trust announcement and the integration of BAT with the BINANCE Smart Chain are both good news for BAT Hodlers.
But First....What's BAT?
Before I start the post, I want to give a very brief overview of BRAVE/BAT for those of you who may not have heard of it. Brave is a web browser that protects your privacy and blocks ads by default. In exchange for opting in to viewing a certain number of ads per hour, you earn the BAT crypto currency. The system is designed to protect users from being overloaded by ads and rewarding them with crypto, but it can also be more beneficial for advertisers as they know that there is a higher chance their ads will actually be paid attention to.
Grayscale Trust Announcement
The first big announcement of the month was that Grayscale Trust would be adding a BAT based stock security. To simplify a bit, think of this as an index fund but instead of tracking the price of oil or the SP500, this trust tracks the price of BAT. Although some people prefer to buy and hold crypto in their own wallet, this BAT trust gives people a way of investing in BAT without having to hold the BAT itself.
While some of you may think this is heresy (not your keys not your coins) there are a lot of people out there who may like what BAT is doing and want to get involved but aren't comfortable navigating an exchange, managing their wallet, or dealing with crypto taxes. This trust gives them an OPTION of investing in BAT without the headaches. If that isn't cool enough, because BATFUND is a traditional asset, it can be held in tax-advantaged accounts like IRA, 401(k) etc.
Even if you would never personally invest in a crypto trust, the BATFUND (as it is called) is still a huge positive for BAT Hodlers. In order to track the price of BAT, the fund (obviously) purchases BAT which means that the more people that buy into the fund, the more the fund has to buy BAT which ends up helping everyone that owns BAT even if they aren't invested with BATFUND itself.
Binance Smart Chain Integration
Let's face it, ETH has been basically unusable for average investors for at least several months which means that even if you were earning BAT, you probably weren't even able to withdrawal it or cash it out simply due to all the high ETH fees. Now that Binance Smart Chain has introduced BAT as a "peggy" asset, users have the ability of migrating their BAT from the slow, gas-hogging, ETH blockchain over to the fast, low fee BSC.
This is still a relatively new announcement, and it remains to be seen what functionality will be enabled for BAT on the Binance Smart Chain. That being said, anytime a new partnership is announced, it usually gets people buzzing and this announcement with BSC is no exception. It seems that the market has reacted quite favorably. The price of BAT has more or less DOUBLED from this time last month which is a welcome sign by many BAT Hodlers.
The BAT bridge on Binance is now live, and Pancake Swap has already added support for BAT. Hopefully, Venus finance adds support for BAT soon. I have noticed that interest rates on Venus are usually higher than ETH based DeFi, so I'd like to see what the returns are for lending BAT on Venus vs the currently low rates on Compound.
Summary
The Brave Browser and Basic Attention Token are the projects that got me into cryptocurrency, so I like when I see them doing well. This has been a huge month for Brave/BAT with the Grayscale announcement as well as the recent integration with Binance Smart Chain. The market has reacted quite favorably to both of the announcements, and it seems that Brave keeps powering ahead with new developments.
As always, thanks for reading. Nothing here is financial advice
Some of the cryptocurrency platforms that I find helpful are listed below. When you join with one of my links, there is no cost or penalty to you, but it does help support my work.
Publish0x – Cryptocurrency blogging site
LBRY – Decentralized video hosting
Splinterlands – Online Trading Card Game
Coinbase – For those times when I need to use a centralized exchange.
References
https://grayscale.co/basic-attention-token-trust/#overview
https://exchange.pancakeswap.finance/#/swap
https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/basic-attention-token
https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1373980356915855360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1373980356915855360%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fcoingape.com%2Fbreaking-brave-bat-joins-binance-smart-chainbsc-ecosystem-to-expand-its-defi-growth%2F
