Brave browser, which aims to secure the anonymity of its users online, announced the expansion of Brave Wallet's functionality in its March 10 blog post. Its latest desktop version v1.49 now allows users to sell cryptocurrencies for fiat within the Brave Wallet, which was developed as a part of the browser’s partnership with Ramp, a fintech startup that offers payment infrastructure to connect crypto and traditional finance.
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Brave originally emerged as an anonymous alternative to popular Internet browsers that collect and monetize users' data. Brave offers its users incentives in the form of Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) for viewing privacy-preserving first-party ads. The rewards can be received to Brave Wallet, a self-custody crypto wallet that is integrated with the browser. With the new off-ramping feature, users can now sell their crypto for fiat without leaving the service.
"After recent events where centralized exchanges mishandled customer funds, it’s more important than ever to offer secure and easy-to-manage self-custody. Before the creation of Bitcoin and the ensuing emergence of Web3 technologies, self-custody wasn’t a common word in most people’s vocabulary. While self-custody has grown in popularity over the past decade, the most common way to hold digital currency and tokens remains with centralized exchanges. We expect to see that shift with innovations in user experience, like the one we are releasing today," the Brave Wallet team said.
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Brave Wallet's developers believe that their new feature can potentially reduce the number of phishing scams that use social engineering to trick their victims into installing malware on their devices. In addition, a built-in wallet minimizes the use of CPU.
Currently, Brave Wallet supports Ethereum and other blockchains compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), including Solana, L2s, and Filecoin. Users can perform swaps on Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, Optimism, Avalanche, Fantom, and Celo. The wallet is available for free, while its code is open source.
