In a very high level, I constantly look out at some metrics on Brave and BAT market share and how that is related to BAT market value. I constantly look out for:
· MaU (monthly active users) and DaU (daily adtive users). Source: bravebat.info.
· Active Campaigns. Source: bravebat.info.
· BAT Purchases for Ads. Source: bravebat.info.
· Verified Creators. Source: bravebat.info.
· Google Play Reviews. Source: Google Play.
· Mozilla Revenue (royalties, ads and subscriptions regarding Firefox): 562 MM USD in 2017, 450 MM USD in 2018, 828 MM USD in 2019, 496 MM USD in 2020. Source: Mozilla annual report.
· Opera financial results: 177 MM USD in 2019 and 165 MM USD in 2020. Net income per add: 1.48 USD. Around 120k ads in 2020. Source: Opera annual report.
· OPRA market Value: around 830 MM USD. Source: NASDAQ: OPRA.
· Market Share: FireFox around 5% and Opera around 2%, Brave uses Chrome User-Agent. Sources: Different sites.
There is a big difference between the token BAT and a company share or a token issued by a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). Those differences directly affects BAT valuation. BAT is totally managed by Brave Software INC. and Brave makes decisions that directly impact on BAT value without consulting or informing BAT holders. Some current decisions taken by Brave signals that this might be an issue for BAT holders and Brave in the future: (1) Brave is charging for the products Brave Talk and Brave Search in USD instead of a transaction that would increase BAT value; (2) Brave decided unilaterally what would be the benefits for BAT holders on swaps on Brave Wallet.
I think there are some technical problems on BAT scalability that limits the decisions over the use of BAT in products transactions. Brave already announced the solution to those problems (BAT running on Solana network). So far BAT holders and Brave are in the same boat trying to growth and improve Brave Products. Therefore, I personally don’t think that today there is an issue. But, in the future, Brave might have a conflict of interest on the decisions regarding BAT.
Considering all that, I have the following thoughts on a very high level BAT valuation:
· The MaU is currently around 50MM users and the Market Value is 1.3B USD, that would give a valuation of 26 USD per user, what I think is a valuation below what is worth.
· BAT market cap is 1.3Bi and Opera market cap is 830MM. But it is necessary to consider that BAT is not Brave. I think Brave has a much higher potentiality and other products besides the browser. BAT also has a lot more liquidity and is listed in almost all exchanges.
If anyone has other sources of information or disagree about any thoughts please share.
Edit: Maybe the post focused too much on the relation between Brave and BAT and not too much on the potential of BAT. I think the product has a huge potential.
A browser is the entrance door for other products. What normally experts says is that the important thing is to have the customer, after having it you will figure out what products to offer and how to monetize it. A browser with a wallet built in, like Brave, can be entrance door for the crypto world for all its users. And Brave users are growing exponentially.
Average customers are not interested on which network chain the protocol runs in, they just want to have a good product with a good UX. The chain network is a backend not a frontend issue. Brave knows that and want to be a multichain product. Brave users will trust Brave on the decision (or to assist on the decision) about security of the chain network. And trust brings value.
Brave products wants to compete with the bigtech, Brave Search competes with Google Search, Brave Browser with Chrome, Brave News with Instagram. I don't need to mention the potential of the revenue if Brave take even a small step on the direction to be a competitor.
Considering other crypto assets, I BAT has a really undervalued market cap.
Finally, Brave sees BAT holders as Stakeholders, they have no intention to harm holders.