May 2021 BAT Purchases Analysis
On May 19, 2021, Brave released seemingly the last of the new numbers about BAT purchases over the course of the month on the Transparency Data Feed page. What we have looks like this:
| Date | Tokens | Source |
| 2021-05-19 | 122,175 | Coinbase |
| 2021-05-19 | 200,000 | Coinbase |
| 2021-05-19 | 200,000 | Coinbase |
| 2021-05-17 | 65,984 | Coinbase |
| 2021-05-16 | 190,618 | Coinbase |
| 2021-05-12 | 200,000 | Coinbase |
| 2021-05-12 | 200,000 | Coinbase |
It seems like Brave is now solely using Coinbase for its token buys. Is this a broader message about the relationship with Uphold? That remains to be seen.
For a reminder, here is what the data looked like for April 2021:
| Date | Tokens | Source |
| 2021-04-21 | 486,043 | Coinbase |
As we can see, May BAT purchases come out to 1,178,777 vs. April BAT purchases of 486,043. This is an increase of +692,734 BAT month-over-month! The caveat to this, of course, would be the sudden correction to the entire cryptocurrency market mid-May. But what does this mean for the health of BAT itself? Let’s dive into it, shall we?
Month-Over-Month Analysis
At the beginning of May, BAT was trading at $1.26, reaching a high of $1.59 before the market action started trending downward, eventually ending the month at $0.75. Quite a tumultuous month, to be sure. But what does that mean for the real-world growth of the BAT ecosystem itself? Well, based on transparency figures, we can get a pretty solid idea. Using the mid-day ranges of the purchases performed by Brave, we can see:
| Date | Tokens | Unit Price | Dollar Value |
| 2021-05-19 | 122,175 | $0.88 | $107,514.00 |
| 2021-05-19 | 200,000 | $0.88 | $176,000.00 |
| 2021-05-19 | 200,000 | $0.88 | $176,000.00 |
| 2021-05-17 | 65,984 | $1.04 | $68,623.36 |
| 2021-05-16 | 190,618 | $1.17 | $223,023.06 |
| 2021-05-12 | 200,000 | $1.30 | $260,000.00 |
| 2021-05-12 | 200,000 | $1.30 | $260,000.00 |
According to the numbers, Brave made tokens purchases of $631,855.90 in April and $1,271,160.42 in May. That means that ad spend increased by a whopping $639,304.52 month-over-month! This is over a 101% increase! This has actually been one of Brave’s strongest-performing months so far this year.
BAT Distribution Thoughts
At the beginning of May 2021, Brave announced that they had 30 million monthly active users (MAUs). As a thought exercise, if you were take the monthly average users total at 30 million and you evenly divide by the number of BAT purchased just by Brave directly each of the last two months, you will find that in April, those users would have received 0.016 BAT (486,043 / 29,000,000) in April vs. receiving 0.039 BAT (1,178,777 / 30,000,000) in May. This should mean that the June payout should reward all users with about twice the BAT they have gotten over the past few months (this is also because the price per unit of BAT has been halved).
This exercise assumes that all MAUs are signed up for Brave Rewards and that Brave divided the BAT purchased on behalf of advertisers was split evenly. This is not meant to be a literal 1:1 analysis.
Dashboard News Soon?
The Self-Service Dashboard, which will likely be a huge driver of token purchases, still hasn’t been launched yet. However, Luke Mulks (Brave VP of Business Operations) has given an update on that lately in a Reddit post:
… Self serve Brave Ads: we have had a beta program with partners testing for +12mo, and are releasing a blog post soon with an update, tour of the self serve process and plans for waitlist rollout for Q3-4. This means additional demand generation for BAT, with eventual support for self serve in +190 countries.
Luke Mulks, Brave Vice-President of Business Operations, May 24, 2021 – Reddit Link
Keep in mind, that if Brave manages to get to say…250 million users (AKA 10% of Chrome’s estimated global market share), there is only enough BAT in existence for each of those people to have 6 BAT. This is not counting the BAT that would be locked up in DeFi or the purchases made by companies advertising their products, not to mention the Brave DEX itself. In such a scenario, that amount of BAT you’re earning now could pay dividends into the future.
Conclusion
As I mentioned last month, the lower price of BAT resulted in a much bigger purchase of tokens for the month of May. However, the biggest story coming out of this month is the flow of advertising dollars into the BAT ecosystem even DURING a big cryptocurrency correction. This action is doing a lot to convince me that BAT will be able to withstand the ups and downs of the market far better than other cryptos with somewhat nebulous use cases.
Advertisements seem to be going strong, with entries from The Motley Fool, Panasonic Technics, PayPal, Progressive Insurance, and Coinbase being among some of the high-end clientele running them. If you are interested in seeing more, you can view a list of currently running ads in your region by going to this site.
We are still early to the party, folks. And with the current price of BAT being the lowest it’s been in about 6 months, this might be the time to buy some if you’ve been waiting to jump in. However, we are probably still about 2-3 years away from “overnight success” in the grand scheme of things. If you want to invest in BAT, now is much better to get in than when it appears on Saturday Night Live. If Dogecoin is any indicator, that’s the perfect time to get OUT. 🙂 However, as always, DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH and never put in what you are not willing to lose!
