I think Brave Reward is likely a fraud, but I don’t have any evidence now.
Once I have one, I will do my best to stop people from using Brave.
In May this year, I learnt about Brave browser. Using Brave with some additional plug-ins, I am able to get rid of virtually any ad when surfing web. I liked Brave then.
Few weeks later, I learnt that Brave sends out rewards, that’s when the terrible experience begins.
I accumulated a decent amount of BAT and claimed it in the very next month. It went to my browser wallet. In order to withdraw that balance, I registered an Uphold account. It takes about 2 months to verify Uphold account. They say my ID is not qualified and I have to send documents to them back and forth.
When the account is finally verified, Brave stops sending ads to my computer. I can only receive rewards when I can not cash it. Once Brave detected that I am able to cash the reward, they stops sending me any ads thus no reward. So the reward is completely an imagination that can not be turned into reality. Or maybe just because I had bad luck. So I contacted the support team for help. They did not answer me, instead, they disabled my BAT forum account. So I created a new one.
That’s fine. Though I couldn’t earn any more BAT, I could cash the BAT already existed in my wallet. Just when I wanted to do that, I found out that they set a new rule that 25 BAT is required to ‘verify’ the wallet. It is not a rule that existed when I first learnt about Brave Reward. They changed the rule just because I want to withdraw it. Every time I want to withdraw my money from Brave browser, something will change to prevent me from doing it. I contacted the support team again. This time there was a response, saying that 25 BAT is required to join the BAT ecosystem. Those who don’t have enough balance are excluded from the whole BAT project. I can not deposit or withdraw or do anything to my wallet since I don’t have 25 BAT. I couldn’t even tip a verified author because my account is not verified. I used to tip Wikipedia using the rewards I earned from viewing ads, but not any more. I feel like Brave project is about to close. At least, it is a good idea but poorly executed.
Few weeks later, I found out that the warning is a bug. The 25 BAT limitation doesn’t even exist. The rewards already went to my Uphold account. Well, that’s good! Let me withdraw it to ripple network. Guess what happened? Transaction failed. I contacted the Uphold support team for help, they responded by deleting my Uphold account. They say they will refund the balance to me, in August, but they are yet to do so.
I contacted Uphold team again. No response. So I contacted the Financial Ombudsman Service to deal with the company. Uphold finally responded to my request, saying they will refund in the unforeseeable future, probably several years later.
Since Uphold is disconnected from my Brave browser, I can receive Brave ads once more, but probably I can never cash it. I thought the reward would accumulate in my wallet because the browser detected that I can’t cash it. But I didn’t. My reward ‘zeroes’ before the date of reward payout. Not just once. This has been happening for consecutively 2 months. I haven’t be able to claim my rewards for 2 months.
I have always been skeptical about Brave. Sometimes I commented my skeptical view in the forum. Most of them are either deleted or hidden by community members. Maybe this post will be deleted soon. Who knows?
These events maybe just coincidence, but more likely Brave Reward and Uphold are both fraud. They claimed that they respect the users’ privacy, but actually sell our data. They profit from the users, say to users that “I will give you some money some day” but never fulfill the promise.
I think Brave Reward is likely a fraud, but I don’t have any evidence now.
Once I have one, I will do my best to stop people from using Brave.