Coin Profile: What is Basic Attention Token, and why does it matter?

As an advertising coin, Basic Attention Token (or BAT) is a one-of-its-kind cryptocurrency concept based on the Ethereum network.

The BAT project looks to decentralize the way in which digital advertising takes place. This hopes to eradicate many of issues that internet users face when it comes to advertisements, such as the creepy fact of being tracked for purposes of targeted advertising. The project is also looking to make the systems in digital advertising more secure so that advertisers don’t fall prey to fraud.

The short of it is that online digital advertising is currently a bit of a zoo, and BAT is hoping to tame it.

In the taming process, the project is looking to cut out the middlemen entirely from online advertising. Middlemen who are essentially monopoly platforms, such as Facebook and Google who earn a whopping combined total of 73% of all funds from online advertisements.

BAT is also aiming to create a system where users provide their attention watching advertisements and are compensated accordingly and hope to make a space where publishers collect the revenue deserved. If this can be achieved, it means that advertisers will benefit from a better investment return and will also be able to collect more accurate data. It sounds like a win-win for all those who are putting in the effort.

BAT’s system does this by making use of smart contracts where the advertiser will send an advertisement to users on the network paying with a token. Then a user will watch the advertisement and subsequently take a nifty portion of the token payment.

It is known that most cryptocurrencies make use of mining in some form such as proof-of-work proof-of-stake as a method to release new coins but BAT has taken a different approach entirely and has stated that once the growth pool has been emptied there will be no more tokens created. Also unlike most other cryptocurrencies, BAT’s price doesn’t really spike or have major declines according to any milestones in development nor any partnership announcements. In fact, the price of the token has more or less fluctuated with the price of  Bitcoin This could be because BAT tokens are only created for use on the project’s platform and not really as a value-holding or trading coin. While several exchanges do trade the cryptocurrency, the BAT team doesn’t seem to encourage this and would rather see the coin put to use and circulate within the network.

This project is not only exciting in its nature, but its got the added bonus of having that fresh “new project” scent since it was only officially announced three months ago. BAT also scored a sweet successful token sale in May and managed to raise $35 million USD in under 30 seconds.

Not only a neat idea with financial backing, the BAT team also has some heavyweights on its side, such as Javascript’s creator and Mozilla Firefox’s co-founder Brendan Eich as well as ZCash’s founder and CEO Zooko Wilcox, and Coinbase’s product manager Ankur Nandwani.

And the ease of the coin continues in storage too. Since BAT is an ERC20 token, it can be stored in any wallet which is ERC20 compatible wallet.