LA Times gets on board the cryptocurrency train

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The Los Angeles Times (LA Times), one of the largest newspaper publishers in the United States, has decided that cryptocurrencies have a place in news. The company has announced that it is now a certified Brave Browser publisher, which means that it can receive contributions and tips using the Basic Attention Token (BAT). The LA Times is the fourth largest U.S.-based newspaper and its website reportedly received 37 million visits each month.

The newspaper signed up to be a verified Brave browser publisher on April 11. It is now part of the Brave community and those contributors who submit content can be paid directly through the BAT without the need of advertisements. Users can set a monthly desired contribution amount for the site, which will then receive the contributions through the BAT.

The BAT will also include an option in the future to allow users to earn rewards for the content they view on the Brave community of sites. Those earnings will be shared with the content publishers based on a formula that includes how much time is spent on the site and publishers can either use the BAT for purchases or convert them to fiat using Uphold.

The Brave browser controls users’ privacy and data so that content can be securely shared with third-party entities, compared to the business model of most browsers, which sells or shares the data. Brave does not include any ads during web surfing if users opt out of the ad displays, making Internet visits more enjoyable.

According to BATGrowth, a site that tracks the Brave Browser and the adoption of the BAT, there were 83,596 verified Brave browser publishers as of April 12. The browser has now become larger than Opera and Puffin according to data available for Android’s market share.

The Brave browser is built using distributed ledger technology (DLT), which makes it more secure, immutable and trustworthy. If all news data could be made available with blockchain technology, of which DLT is a part, news reporting would be much simpler and easier to verify and users would feel more confident with the information they receive.