Brave Browser / BAT is an example of why a great project doesn't always lead to great returns

Anyone on here who hasn't used Brave should try it. There was a post on here about Brave blocking Youtube Ads, but it does so much more. In addition it blocks most website prompts, like asking you to turn off ad block, or on mobile, they're adding a feature to stop websites prompting you to open their content on their app.

These features ad up on the browsing experience, they're doing a great job of removing many of the annoying aspects of modern day browsing, but BAT continues to slide towards irrelevance. Today, it's ranked 115 on Coingecko, after being a top 50 coin a few years back.

https://www.bravebat.info/brave_initiated_bat_purchase

Brave purchases BAT using advertiser revenue to give users their token. They're buying these on the open market and look at the trend. After looking like they'd need to buy and re-distribute millions of BAT a month, they've cratered to a multi-year low in USD. Without this buy pressure, BAT has become less and less valuable.

User growth has stalled around 55 million monthly users, though daily users continues to tick up, now over 20 million a day. What's crazy though is that they're doing like $250k in ad buys for 20 million users a month. That's like a penny a month per user, and shows an inability to convert a decent user base into revenue.

Right now the biggest headwind for BAT is global regulations. After 6 years, they have only 2, not great custodians. Choosing between Uphold (which sucks) and Gemini (which just screwed a bunch of users in their earn program) is crap. Coinbase and Kraken should be options by now. People in developing countries should have options. Right now Brave removed their custodial partners, and those users are on the verge of losing their earned BAT forever.

Web3 and applications like BAT are going to eventually succeed, but the hurdles are immense, and converting these wonderful ideas into revenue streams that justify the token is lacking in the space. The early 00's was full of great ideas and promises that were never realized. I would advise anyone to be cautious investing into use cases just yet. A ton of these are going to fail before the Amazons and the Googles show themselves. We gotta get through the AOL, Netscape, Yahoo phase of Web3 first.