here’s another one
I swear to you, Uncle B invented this currency twenty years ago in a late-night ramble. He said what if there was a kind of point system — let’s call them nergs — that were worth a few pennies at most, and wherever you went on the internet, you could plunk down a few nergs on any content you liked. It wouldn’t cost you much, it wouldn’t give the creator much — except in the aggregate, if lots of people liked his content.
That’s what the Basic Attention Token is. It was invented in parallel to the Brave browser, but you can buy BAT independently.
I’ve started using Brave, both on my phone and my desktop(s). I like it a lot as a browser. And if you turn on the feature, it will reward you BAT for interacting with ads. Then you can poke the little BAT triangle symbol in the upper right corner and give a website a tip. Any website that is registered to receive BAT, that is.
No, this website is not registered to receive BAT. You cannot give me a nerg. Do not try.
I don’t think they’ve implemented the bit where you can straight convert BAT to dollars, but they promise it’s coming. I think you can convert BAT to some other cryptocurrency and thence to dollars. It blows me away, though, that they’ve given me BAT worth about $10 for doing nothing but looking at inoffensive ads. And then I can go I like the cut of your jib and make it rain nergs.
This one isn’t an investment, it’s a toy.
Posted: July 9th, 2019 under blogging.
Comments: 12
Comments
Comment from Skandia Recluse
Time: July 9, 2019, 9:48 pm
Must be something in the air. I just signed up with Walmart to be one of their volunteer survey responders. I think they send me advertising before they ask my opinion about the advertising.
My local Walmart (fifty miles round trip local) is undergoing a major rearrangement of merchandise and I can’t find anything. It has all been moved. I was just waiting for the chance to unload on some hapless manager when I got the email thing from Bentonville.
They also asked my opinion about men’s fashion. Whooo Boy are they gonna get an email. Their merchandising consultant is encouraging the corporation to try and entice the young urban hipster demographic into their stores. Sam Walton made his billions selling to under served rural communities.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: July 9, 2019, 10:09 pm
My wallet for July:
Comment from unkawill
Time: July 9, 2019, 11:05 pm
Look up Abra.com It’s a platform/ app/ wallet where you can purchase over thirty Cryptos and cash out into any of the 54 fiat currencies they support. BAT is one of the cryptos they support. I have Brave also, I just haven’t started using it yet.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: July 9, 2019, 11:18 pm
I think it’s the best browser I’ve tried yet. Very snappy. And I used to pay for Opera, back in the day. It even beats Slimjet for nimbleness.
Comment from Uncle Al
Time: July 10, 2019, 12:59 am
@stoatie – How well does Brave do when it comes to extensions and add-ons? I use Opera, and I would miss GIF Blocker, Disable HTML5 Autoplay, Scroll to Top, and ScriptSafe.
edit:
p.s. All of the filtering stuff is disabled for sweasel.com, and I specifically allow runningweasel.swf to run – I adore that little guy!
Comment from Durnedyankee
Time: July 10, 2019, 1:14 am
Ah BOT Beetles!
BAT?
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: July 10, 2019, 9:06 am
It’s a Chrome fork, Uncle Al, so it will take any Chrome extension.
It makes me sad that I can no longer make animations like runningweasel.swf. I mean, most people block Flash these days anyway, but I made that in Shockwave. Very fun program which I do not have no mo’.
Comment from Carl
Time: July 10, 2019, 6:06 pm
Thanks for putting us on to Brave. I had never heard of it. I’ve now installed it on my PC. It’s excellent.
Comment from Jon
Time: July 10, 2019, 6:07 pm
Interesting, I looked through their FAQ. Seeing how most of my browsing is on mobile now, I will be more interested when you don’t have separate “personas” for desktop and mobile. As slow as it can be, that’s one of the things I currently like about Firefox signon. (Also that you can end a signon if it’s not legit/for an old device)
I’m less happy with the “give fiat money to the BAT wallet” aspect.
If it were only “earn for ad views” the game aspect would appeal to me more. The money part makes it the “pay to win” thing that a lot of mobile games have.
I like the “grind” aspect of gaming, which I know some people hate.
Comment from DurnedYankee
Time: July 10, 2019, 6:27 pm
Dear UK friends.
The ambassador you sent us appears to be defective and we were wondering if you could send a van around to take him back to the factory for repair or scrapping.
Signed
America
Your former colonies and friends using sorta the
same language.
PS
If the European Union won’t let you go, we’ve written a guide bookish thing on kicking out unwanted rulers from across the sea.
You may be familiar with it but in case you don’t have one of your own, we’ll be happy to send you a copy.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: July 10, 2019, 8:34 pm
I haven’t bought any BAT, Jon, and I don’t plan to. You make little bits watching ads, but occasionally they’ll just drop a ‘grant’ on you for no reason.
There’s a kind of interesting list of BAT-registered content creators here.
Comment from BJM
Time: July 11, 2019, 11:03 pm
Yeppers, it’s all fun and games until the Nerg Police break down your door at 4:00 AM.
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