Brave, an open-source Chromium-based web browser, has blocked South Africans from withdrawing cryptocurrency rewards obtained by viewing in-app adverts.
Brave offers additional functionality centered on privacy and blockchain technology despite being based on Google’s well-liked Chromium platform. A built-in bitcoin wallet, Brave Shields, a firewall and VPN provided by Brave, and privacy-preserving search are some of them.
Brave announced earlier this year that to withdraw, sell or exchange the Basic Attention Token (BAT) for a different cryptocurrency while using its platform, you must link the browser to one of Brave’s partner providers, Gemini, Uphold, or BitFlyer.
However, BitFlyer is only available to users in Japan, and Gemini restricted new Brave users to the United States at the start of October. This was after Gemini dropped support for several countries in May, including South Africa.
South African withdrawals remained available through Uphold. However, in July, Brave announced that it was restricting the countries that it supports through Uphold to 18 regions.
Brave further announced that those whose Uphold wallets were already linked to Brave could continue to accrue rewards to the platform until they were naturally logged out over time.
By the start of October, when the last few South Africans who might’ve still been logged into Uphold had to reauthenticate, Brave had not yet resolved the issue preventing it from supporting the country.
Brave has been tight-lipped about why it has dropped support for so many countries, however last Friday, Brave Rewards product manager Christopher Nguyen noted on Reddit that one of the main reasons is fraud.
He said, “One reason would be unsustainable patterns of fraud. For instance, it may be very easy to acquire or forge government IDs from certain countries, making them more difficult to support in a sustainable way. Fraudsters are also becoming bolder, broadening their attacks to include a wider set of countries, including ones with strong ID document integrity. Sometimes, business decisions need to be made to ensure the partnership remains sustainable for both Brave and the custodial partner.”
“The particulars of these decisions, i.e., the exact combination of factors, their weights, etc, can only be determined on a case-by-case basis, and is different for each partner,” he added.
As part of bringing countries back online, Nguyen said Brave Rewards would soon require users to declare their country.
He noted, “This is major in helping us combat the abuse of Brave Rewards that are harming the experience for everyone else, and represents a major step toward allowing us to re-enable a wide set of regions.”
Nguyen advised users whose Brave Rewards were still connected to their Gemini or Uphold accounts not to disconnect even though it says they are logged out.
“Even if it says ‘Logged out’, you’re still considered connected to Gemini (or Uphold) to us, and should still be receiving ad payouts,” he said.
He also pointed out that Brave was working on adding new custodial options.
On Sunday, 9 October 2022, BAT was available at R5.45 per token on the South African cryptocurrency exchange VALR, though one had to buy a minimum of R250 per transaction.