The direction of the crypto industry

The crypto space has changed a ton over the last decade. It started out as a decentralized option for folks tired of the hassle with Paypal and the mainstream banking system. Back then, it was super easy to make transactions with crypto. You just set up an address, and you were good to go for sending and receiving payments right away. But today, I was trying to cash out my BAT that I earned from ads on the Brave Browser over the past four years, which I had saved in my UpHold wallet. Man, it was a real pain to get my funds out to my own wallet. First, I couldn’t even access the wallet through my web browser because it insisted that I had to use the app instead. Then, the app started grilling me about how much I make every year, what my job is, who owns the wallet I’m trying to send my funds to, and, of course, they wanted a selfie. All of this just to cash out 23 bucks. On top of that, the transaction didn’t go through instantly but got stuck in some pending verification limbo. Am I surprised? Nah, not really. With all the regulators and governments getting more involved in crypto, I kinda saw this coming. Just really frustrated about where this whole industry is going.

This is my latest discovery and I have been wondering if that is the end result of government involvement in crypto and shouting this is a crypto year or trump crypto year according to trump, what we are going to face in the nearest future is going to be worst where decentralisation and privacy will be a crime and a punishable offence. Right now we are going to pretend we didn't see it coming and be comfortable submitting those requirements until it becomes realised.

Banking the unbanked is gradually becoming a dead dog slogan in the cryptocurrency market lately,  alot of regulatory demands is pushing privacy and decentralization into extinction we are beginning to dance to the tone of centralized authority even in the freedom inclined space like cryptocurrency. By the way, were you able to get your withdrawal through,  since i habe some balance over there for few years too and hoping to get them out before i lose everything to time.

Yes, after a while I checked everything and the tokens arrived on my hardware wallet. I hope you are able to get your funds as well, as even though it's a small amount, it's still useful money. You really should do this as soon as possible, because I've been observing Brave changes the features involving wallet and paid to view feature quite frequently (like terms and conditions, for an example). If you don't pay attention, the tokens simply disappear from your reach.

Everything is being controlled, there is no question about that, they even confiscate bitcoins and keep it, now the US government also trying to be in the crypto space, all will be regulated , this is going to be a battle, tax, also the identity will be tried to see since they want who will be tax, so it is better to use a hardware wallet put everything there, and forget it, in our country a crypto framework is on the way, and some banks who already adds a swap/exchange for crypto has already put some TIN requirements for users, before you can do anything, its a nightmare.

To be fair t his is not exactly related to the "crypto industry" and you should have known Brave enforces KYC. Basically the Brave guys contradicted themselves very early on! They initially created a browser based on existing code and called it Brave and advertised it as a "privacy oriented" browser that would help you protect your privacy and block ads with the browser itself!!! Then they went ahead and added the option to watch the ads, which was their first backtrack on their core principle. Then they took it one step further and added their shittoken to encourage you to follow them on that backtracking and then backtracked even more by adding KYC to their browser! This is why I always say centralization and decentralization don't mix well.

Brave team and Brave browers are shit as they broke their own business slogan for privacy. Years later, they developed and launched $BRAVE token with honeypots to Brave browser users that they can use the browser, and get $BRAVE in browsing reward but KYC is mandatory to claim the token. Brave Browser - Why it doesn't care about your privacy. Brave browser falls short of its promises of privacy. For a browser that claims to be all about privacy, Brave requiring KYC to transfer BAT is strange. Want privacy while browsing on the internet, let's use Tor browser that is available on computers and mobile. https://www.torproject.org/download/

That's a pretty crazy. A browser that labels itself as privacy browser is asking for a selfie, even though we are talking about their other product which is a wallet app it's still just as crazy. I have never seen a crypto wallet app asking for a selfie and not to mention they enforce it for $23. It'd be the biggest red flag for me and there's no knowing if the data gonna get breached at some point and got misused by criminals. At this point I guess the non-incentivized browser like chrome is more privacy than brave, sounds ridiculous but that's the case. At least they don't ask for a selfie.

And soon firefox is heading its path after the new CEO is about to turn firefox into an AI based browser. But like other people said it's more the problem of dealing with half baked crypto company. Crypto itself is permissionless and doesn't ask for KYC. There are tons of crypto projects that don't ask for KYC. As for brave, they're not exactly crypto company. It's the company that label themselves as web3 company developing in the decentralized ecosystem yet keep asking for KYC. They are web2 company disguising as web3 company and one thing to know that they are web2 company is whether or not they ask for KYC for the most useless thing.

I am also not surprised at all, now the competition in the crypto industry is more about making peace with the regulators because they know opposing is the same as not getting space, for example CEX is starting to be pressured by regulations and that is dragging private coins to leave unless they choose to stay then the choice is only one which is to submit to the rules. The scheme will be like that and the OP case is basically almost the same which is all because of regulations that don't allow you to withdraw money without collateral being submitted.

All that has been happening are not pointing to the fact that we are regretting over our decision for choosing crypto, because its a matter of what we know and how we wanted it, privacy is one of the main benefits which we should seek after in it, this will be our first time priority, government and institution adoption are not the reason to think of everything being under centralized authority or the market price manipulation, its more of how we know about the strategy to play our game in it.

All official organizations and companies will have to comply with regulators if they don't want to get shut down. Otherwise they will be sanctioned for it. If you want to avoid Kyc i am afraid it's getting harder even though there are still ways for it. But considering that you might want to cash out at some point, that part is getting harder and harder to keep anonymous. Personally i don't see a future for anonymous / pseudonymous cash, unless something radical happens, and that would have to be so radical that negative aspects of it might outweigh the positive.