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.
Amazon was so cool in 2016. Somehow went from an ambitious company building the sci-fi future with autonomous deliveries, zero-employee stores, healthcare industry overhaul... to a margin-optimizing data warehouse with a hostile posture towards agentic commerce and forward progress.
AT&T-ass stock these days sadly
The token-equity split convo is important but overblown, particularly in the context of VVV.
1. watered-down tokens with a partial claim on strong businesses (VVV, ZAMA), are more admirable than just running it up in private mkts forever like prediction markets, AI and many of the more substantive new crypto projects
2. You have the OTM call option on restructuring, like w ENA and UNI
3. what else are you going to bid? another pump clone? id love to find something as strong as venice with a better token, but if youre investing and not mindshare swing trading, there aren't many better options.
Posted on Delphi portal Sep 21 members.delphidigital.io/fee…
Nike and Lulu hate money, that is why they are going to zero. If they liked money, they wouldn't discontinue hit products and take radically different design directions.
Bring back Free Run 2, Free Run 3, Flyknit Racer, Kobe 8 and ABC Commission pant slim and maybe we can turn this thing around
BREAKING: Nike stock, $NKE, crashes another -6% to its lowest level since September 2013 after posting weaker than expected earnings.
The stock is now down -82% from its record high, erasing -$230 billion in market cap.
jordan retweeted
The mindshare on robinhood:0x98096d17e191b3da1d5f99a6d7b3584351b11e18 and $HIMS is unmatched, it’s on the tip of everyone’s tongue.
We are at the forefront of innovation on @RobinhoodApp chain with tokenized stocks and meme pairs via @longdotxyz
Entering a cycle with clarity and one of the biggest financial institutions in the world
Boner coin, the big one.
jordan retweeted
Agreed, i have basically the opposite view of the thrive eternal thesis (which underestimates the exponential growth of ai generated content platforms of novel varieties)
ik i discussed w @sanlsrni curious thoughts on below
I am high-conviction bearish American sportball long-term. The modern age erodes the teams' connection with their local communities and new rules nerf the brutality appeal. It's only interesting alongside analytics and hypergambling, which the NFL tacitly admits through the shift in coverage style & ad partners.
Hamstrings already introduce a problematic amount of rng. They cannot afford to insult the integrity of the betting market like this. Eventually there will be purer competitive arenas and more engaging forms of speculation.
BCI and frontier tech will make Ready Player One-style sports viable in 20 years. Inputs will be widely understood as the core of sport. No need for CTE or a genetic lottery that caps the player universe at arbitrary physical thresholds. Pro sports will more closely resemble eSports, and sim racing's relationship to F1.
Once these inputs scale into engaging simulated environments, the most popular sport will be the coolest thing you can fathom. Probably something like Rocket League.
Meatspace doesn't die, it just becomes optional for the top sports. People go to NFL games for the analog experience, not the lines, logistics, or even the view. The stadium survives on inertia. Once it's no longer a prerequisite, better analog options win. The thing you're speculating on becomes secondary to the boutique environment you speculate in.
Imagine an entire fantasy season condensed into a 10 day vacation with the boys. 1 gameweek per day, trade talks over golf, cigars, poker, etc. There are still Josh Allen and Justin Jefferson equivalents, but no one cares about their 40 time. They don't tear their ACL and their incentives are aligned with your fantasy team.
A cross-chain social trading app.... with
- timestamped theses
- multi hop trades
- limit orders
- transparent quotes
I am high-conviction bearish American sportball long-term. The modern age erodes the teams' connection with their local communities and new rules nerf the brutality appeal. It's only interesting alongside analytics and hypergambling, which the NFL tacitly admits through the shift in coverage style & ad partners.
Hamstrings already introduce a problematic amount of rng. They cannot afford to insult the integrity of the betting market like this. Eventually there will be purer competitive arenas and more engaging forms of speculation.
BCI and frontier tech will make Ready Player One-style sports viable in 20 years. Inputs will be widely understood as the core of sport. No need for CTE or a genetic lottery that caps the player universe at arbitrary physical thresholds. Pro sports will more closely resemble eSports, and sim racing's relationship to F1.
Once these inputs scale into engaging simulated environments, the most popular sport will be the coolest thing you can fathom. Probably something like Rocket League.
Meatspace doesn't die, it just becomes optional for the top sports. People go to NFL games for the analog experience, not the lines, logistics, or even the view. The stadium survives on inertia. Once it's no longer a prerequisite, better analog options win. The thing you're speculating on becomes secondary to the boutique environment you speculate in.
Imagine an entire fantasy season condensed into a 10 day vacation with the boys. 1 gameweek per day, trade talks over golf, cigars, poker, etc. There are still Josh Allen and Justin Jefferson equivalents, but no one cares about their 40 time. They don't tear their ACL and their incentives are aligned with your fantasy team.
"I'm trying to help support the Bhayshul Tuten fantasy people out there."
Trevor Lawrence on kneeling in front of the end zone which lead to a Tuten rushing TD the next play
🎤: @AKinkhabwala
jordan retweeted
my BONER quant
Robinhood Summit is pivotal for RH chain. Vlad & co have hit all the right notes in areas Coinbase left people frustrated.
Coinbase's habit of moving slowly and doing hollow announcement events leaves a big opportunity for RH to deliver something big and reinforce the built-different vibe that has worked well so far
Robinhood Summit is pivotal for RH chain. Vlad & co have hit all the right notes in areas Coinbase left people frustrated.
Coinbase's habit of moving slowly and doing hollow announcement events leaves a big opportunity for RH to deliver something big and reinforce the built-different vibe that has worked well so far
Memecoins have a mission again. Meme-stocks are the new frontier in an otherwise played-out memecoin meta, turning holders into voters. A Fartcoin-sized BONER with a community LP and delegated HIMS would control ~7% of HIMS votes at the peak and ~8% today.
jordan retweeted
It’s “trump is a grifter” (true) or “the Democrats are communists” (true) but never “maybe a third additional reason clarity failed is because crypto has done virtually nothing for the lives of the median American, the notion that this is a grassroots movement is entirely fabricated, at least greatly exaggerated, evidenced by last election cycle’s biggest donor class being able to get their people elected with money but when it came time to vote on a comparatively tame piece of legislation there was just no demand, no outraged constituents begging to tokenize helocs, no wine aunts demanding to speak with their rep about how perps should be classified, that’s just not a real person that exists in our society, we have Venmo and we have many ways to gamble already. It’s mainly just suits versus suits and whatever outcome, most people will be just fine, moisturized, in their lane etc etc. Americans do call their senators about data centers and abortion but they just don’t call their senators about crypto because it’s not very important one way or another, this is not even occupy Wall Street, flip a coin, they don’t really care and so senators decided the cost of voting for something people are apathetic about was greater than the cost of voting against something people are apathetic about. Almost no introspection on this
The doomer psyop to ban open source doesn't really worry me. I'm bull call spread long AI progress, no singularity.
Legislation could choke new open weights but can't stop inference getting cheaper. Once open models are good enough, cheap inference is more important progress than the newest model imo.
4-month lag means Fable 5.1/Astra-tier weights land way before anything passes. Cat's out of the bag, a locally run army of crows will be available to anyone gg
FWA v2 fixes the weakest points of v1. If it fails, all that's left is an indictment on Ethereum mainnet as a speculation venue.
jordan retweeted
Mainnet is coming.
Noise was founded on a simple idea: cultural insight should have economic value.
Mainnet turns that idea into a marketplace. People curate and trade cultural signals -- and earn by seeing what matters before the world catches on.
Testnet closes Friday, September 11, at 9am ET. Thank you to everyone who traded, curated, and shared feedback. You helped shape the product and build Noise's first community.
If you purchased Credits during testnet, you’ll receive rewards on mainnet equal to the amount you spent. Only purchased Credits qualify. Bonus Credits, earned Credits, and testnet trading balances will not transfer.
Launch details & a few surprises coming soon.