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Brave idea: Ex Mozilla man punts Bitcoin adblocking browser

Pay direct, avoid the advertising

Browser upstart Brave is now letting you contribute Bitcoin to websites in return for ad-blocking.

Beta version 0.11.6 of Brave has activated its Brave Payments, which lets you send micropayments to websites as a reward for not hitting you with ads or trackers.

You turn on Brave Payments from within the open-source browser’s preferences page, then top up a wallet using Coinbase or Bitcoin. BitGo hold the virtual funds.

Donations to websites are anonymous, with your IP address masked.

The idea is you reward sites that depend on ad revenue, weaning them off the need for both the ads and the invasive tracking technologies. You set the payment level.

Brave is the work of former Mozilla co-founder and CEO and JavaScript daddy Brendan Eich. It landed $4.5m in venture funding in August.

In a blog post here, Eich said of the new Payments feature:

“For the first time in the history of web browsers, people can now seamlessly reward the sites whose content they value and wish to support, while remaining untracked by anyone...

“This removes the need for intermediaries who may overwhelm web pages with invasive trackers and ads (and sometimes even malware). It also avoids centrally managed ‘feed’ algorithms that may or may not value your idea of content quality.” ®

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