Why BAT hitting $1 is bigger than you think
It’s been a long 3 years…
Basic Attention Token is a Ethereum-based ERC20 utility token from the creator of Javascript and co-founder of Mozilla & Firefox. It is most famously known for it’s Brave integration where users trade their attention (viewing ads) for BAT. The cryptocurrency was launched in 2017 and peaked around $.96 in 2018 less than $0.10 shy of $1. Today, BAT is up over 30% skyrocketing past the $1 mark and sought for all time highs at $1.14! This is a major achievement for the BAT community because for privacy ambassadors and Brave early adopters we have been slowly HODLing BAT away in our wallets at prices ranging from a dime to a quarter. However it is much more than that. Yes, the price increase is wonderful, but it has been expected. We believe the BAT project has much more potential and this milestone confirms our expectations. It’s about the project more than the price.
According to CoinMarketCap, on this historic day, BAT has a 24-hour trading volume of $1,642,411,969 USD. That’s roughly: 6,249 Ferraris, 1,642,411 iPhone 12s, or 32,848 Telsas. Wow.
Now, why did BAT increase so fast?
Could it be because of Brave’s major announcement of it’s own search engine to compete against Google?
Could it be because Grayscale is exploring a major investment into BAT?
Could it be because of Brendan Eich’s (CEO of Brave) discussion at SXSW about “The Surveillance Economy and the Future of Privacy”?
Could it be simply because Bitcoin (and crypto) have been getting so much attention?
Who knows? One thing is for sure, BAT has an extremely promising future ahead. Let me explain…
People want privacy. It’s as simple as that. Major companies are used to treating us as a dataset and using, selling, and taking our personal information carelessly. I do not need to explain much on this topic because we already experienced the major data breaches which exposed our personal information into the deepest pits of the internet. Who remembers getting super psyched out when casually mentioning going to the lake next weekend and receiving very specific hotel ads next to the lake? Oh yeah, not anymore because it is kind of expected. Right now, Google is facing a $5B class action lawsuit for tracking users in Incognito mode. Not cool, Google! According to Kinsta, Google takes home the large slice of the default desktop browser pie with over 77.03% of market share. Microsoft Edge has 5.83%, Firefox has 7.63%, and Brave has less than 1%. With all information Google was getting, being the #1 advertising company and having the most web browser market share just was not enough — they wanted more! This is exactly why more and more people are taking privacy seriously every year. A prime example of this increase in privacy awareness is DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo, is a search engine focused on privacy, and during 2020 its average number of daily searches increased by 62% as users seek alternatives to impede data tracking.
What is mostly interesting, is that earlier in the year a semi-similar situation happened when WhatsApp changed it’s privacy policy. Millions of WhatsApp users flocked over to Telegram following a change to the messaging service’s privacy policy. Telegram had so many new users that it literally shut down! Seriously! I remember not being able to open it for hours. The reason why this is interesting is because of this: There is a strong likelihood people are going to flock from Google Chrome to Brave to find refuge for true internet privacy. Google Chrome’s market share is huge and Brave’s is extremely small. This means Brave has tons of room for potential growth. This will introduce more and more people to the value of BAT. BAT increased because the utility of the token has real world value. Their is institutional money coming in. This past month I remember seeing multiple ads from PayPal, the Mini Cooper car, and The Motley Fool. In fact, Brave has conveniently laid out multiple case studies from early adopters that had success using advertising with Brave. And this is only the beginning… In fact, BAT has a great roadmap ahead of itself. If perfected by the next bull run, it should drive the value of BAT beyond single digits.
Finally, If you made it this far, check out the BAT Roadmap 2.0.
Twitter: @chandlersantos_
