A Brave New Roadmap for BAT BAT is up 182% in 30 days, nearly 4x off its Aug 14 ATL of $0.055. It's a 9 year old token with no remaining unlocks and some strong potential catalysts. Brave is one of the best consumer businesses touching crypto. The problem is, the team has not incorporated the BAT token into the business anywhere near the extent they initially promised. Could this be about to change? BAT Refresher Brave is a privacy browser that blocks trackers and surveillance ads. 128M MAU in September (+27% YoY) and 55M DAU. The 2017 pitch was users getting paid for their attention. Users can opt-in to see privacy-preserving ads and get 70% of the revenue in BAT, paid to their browser-native wallet. Brave has gradually moved away from browser ads. Search is now the core business: 2.5B queries per month, a Search API, ~$100M of annualized revenue in Q1 2025, and search ad revenue up 5x in 2025 per chief of ads JP Schmetz. Much of this growth, he says, is fueled by agentic AI. Brave’s Search API is one of the few full web indexes friendly to agents, which made it the first search tool built into OpenClaw. The broader pitch is that Brave could become the search layers for AI labs, enterprise, indie agents, and pay-per-call through x402. None of the search revenue reaches BAT. Brave’s BAT buying fell from ~$13M a year in 2021-22 to $0.14M in 2025, with nothing since Oct 21, 2025. Browser ads are effectively deprecated. Roadmap 4.0 and upcoming Tokenomics Revamp On July 9, Brave released Roadmap 4.0, laying out a revamp for BAT utility as the company pushes into payments. Brave has plans for a stablecoin debit card, a unified wallet, BravePay, x402 & MPP payments, and AI royalties for creators. For BAT, the changes include: - Brave will buy BAT with an undisclosed share of revenue from the new products and distribute as rewards - card purchases earn BAT - earned BAT can be locked into BravePass for premium access - rewards tiers for holding BAT Brave promised a dedicated tokenomics post later in 2026. Meanwhile, the card waitlist passed 200K and card code is landing on GitHub (tickets closed Oct 6 and 13). The buyback has four problems: - Undisclosed buyback % - Pre-launch products: The card does not have the card has no issuer, reward rates or launch date. - Recycling, not burning: Bought BAT is distributed as rewards, most of which will presumably be sold. - Search is excluded: When search ads launched in Dec 2022, Brave said it hoped to make them “eligible for BAT earnings in the coming months.” Today the help page says they’re “not eligible for BAT earnings.” The napkin math is bleak. At a $315M market cap, a 5% net buyback yield needs ~$16M a year of BAT kept off the market. If users sell 70% of their rewards, Brave has to buy ~$52M a year: ~4x its 2021-22 peak, and ~$210M of roadmap revenue at a 25% buyback share. EtherFi Cash has ~$2B annualized spend. Brave will need to become a top crypto card and see rapid success with its other new products to make BAT fundamentals look strong. TL;DR Brave has 128M-users and is extremely well-positioned in the AI payments narrative. The stablecoin card and lack of future unlocks are additional positives. The problem is that Brave’s new push is a familiar story. BAT is the hook for a new product, then gets deprioritized once that product finds traction. The new roadmap even hedges for this case: initiatives “may become less of a focus over time,” and buyback “timing and amounts will vary.” It’s likely not malicious, but the slow rug bear case is a realistic outcome. BAT is a trade into the tokenomics post, not reliable exposure to Brave.

A new episode of Hivemind is live! This week the team is joined by Ethena founder @gdog97_ to explore the next phase of onchain finance and why RWA perps could overtake crypto perps. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro & Market Outlook 10:25 Introducing Ethena Founder Guy Young 12:55 Crypto's $150 Trillion Opportunity 23:55 DeFi Yields, Exchanges & the Perps Race 43:00 Pump & the Memecoin Economy 55:30 Onchain Options 59:05 Token Unlocks & Lessons From Building Ethena 1:09:30 What's Next for Stablecoins?