Yes I know I canΒ΄t stop talking about BAT and Brave these last couple of weeks.
Hopefully, this is the last one for 2023. So I better make it a good one!
And It will be a good one for those of you, who like me, make BAT from Brave ads but live in a region that is (no longer) supported by Uphold.
So I will not cry anymore about how Uphold stopped supporting the Netherlands and by doing so killed my service.
My Service
For those of you the service I provided was the following:
You have BAT from Brave Ads in your Brave Browser, but no Uphold Wallet so you can not monetize the BAT. So basically you are holding a crypto you can not do anything with until you meet me.
I tell you that I will gladly take your BAT and pay you in BitcoinCash or HIVE. But I will only pay you 66,6% of the value of your BAT, that is a Devilish Good Deal isnΒ΄t it?
Well, some people that do not use the service came crying that only giving 66,6% was too little. Of course, everyone has a right to an opinion but I had to set this person straight:
The process is simple you tip a verified channel, the owner of that channel getΒ΄s 95% of your tip, and 5% goes back to Brave. Once received payment is made to the BCH address or Hive account.
But when my region was no longer supported I had no verified channel anymore and that put a stop to my being able to help people monetize their BAT.
I cried like a Baby and asked for Help:
With success as you can read in the follow-up:
I found a good sheriff willing to help out the people in need, and as mentioned in the article, we needed to run some tests to ensure my newfound partner could actually transfer funds out of Uphold.
Sounds Simple, Right?
Well, it should be easy to send crypto from your wallet, but it took us half a day.
Uphold is a necessary evil if you want to monetize the BAT you make from Brave Ads. That is also the only reason why you should use it. I would almost advise using our swapping service even if you live in a supported region just to avoid the irritation and annoyance using Uphold causes.
Why?
Because Uphold nowadays asks you to make a selfie to verify your account. But they only ask that after they fail to process your first transfer. The funny thing is, they then send you an email that says: We could not verify your Selfie
Of course, you could not, you did not ask for it!
Only during the second attempt, they will ask you for a selfie. Now I assume most Uphold users are Brave users.... and all of them are waiting for ages for the Veriff (Upholds Verification Tool) to activate the selfie screen. Which never happens!
The Veriff verification screen is a pop-up and all pop-ups like that are blocked by your Brave Shields. You would expect a tool like that to have a note saying to make sure your shields are down...but nooooooooooooo.
Not a single reference, so first they tell you that they couldnΒ΄t verify a selfie they did not ask for, and then they have the audacity to use a tool that is blocked by Brave Shields without a note or anything.
Now I knew both issues from my previous experiences with Uphold so I was able to guide my partner through these issues.
Normally, when you do the transaction a second time, you turn down your shields, and make sure there is enough light your selfie will go through with no issues.
Not this time, the selfie went through alright but then Uphold froze entirely, and when it came back and we wanted to make a third attempt to make the payment to the person that Tipped us 7 BAT Poo Happened.
What Kind Of π© You May Wonder
On the third attempt trying to send $1.10 over the BitcoinCash Network the Network Showed as Not Available>
Not only the BCH Network, but all networks were set to unavailable. And if this persisted, what it did, Uphold suggested contacting support. Which we did, in the meantime I made the payment from my Uphold wallet over the BCH Network with no issue at all, not even a selfie (I did make 3 selfies already these last 45 days so maybe they are sick of my face).
It went through and our customer got paid. But it was still uncertain if my partner could actually make a payment from Uphold. But all we could do is be patient and wait to see what Uphold would say, or hope that the issue would resolve itself over time.
The latter happened, 4 hours later my partner contacted me that the networks were available again and he was going to make the 3rd attempt.
Epic Fail
That 3rd attempt failed, but I could have predicted that because Uphold did not ask for the selfie they want to verify.
Attempt Number 4, by now we have spent over 90 minutes trying to send $1.10 from Uphold. This time shields were down, we got the selfie, but it did not get verified......
Okay, I will not drag this out much more, it took 3 selfies due to the lack of light before my partner finally got verified and the $1.10 was transferred.
Uphold is indeed an Epic Fail, but the good news is that we can continue servicing people all over the world that are lucky enough to live in a region that is not supported by Uphold. They will never have to endure the pain this horrible wallet bestows on people.
Bottom Line
We spend half a day paying $1.10 through uphold. Our profit after fees was 50 cents which we have to split. So please if anyone wants to be funny tell me again that asking 33,3% is a lot. We do not provide this service to get rich!
The #1 Reason we provide this service is that we understand that there are many places in the world where $1.10 can make the difference, but these are places where Uphold is not supported. To ensure everyone can benefit from Brave, something Brave should do not us btw, we offer this service.
We donΒ΄t get rich from these swaps, they take more time than you can imagine and we donΒ΄t mind putting in that time to help out. Yes, it allows us to set aside a bit of BAT. Yes, maybe one day BAT will reach a new ATH and we can sell ours, that would be a nice little bonus. But the main idea is to enable everyone to monetize the BAT they make from Brave without using that Epic Fail called Uphold.
Thanks for the read!
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