Brave and Uphold suspend wallet verification in several countries

One of the perks that I have been benefitting from using Brave browser aside the privacy protection and great adblocker was the optional Brave rewards program which incentivised users for viewing adverts served by the brave browser.

Though the income generated by viewing the ads wasn't much , it was way better than having to encounter pop up ads which sometimes one simply can't escape and not earning anything for such. I had initially been faced with a challenge of setting up my brave rewards account with uphold because there was a popup of having 2 BAT as a requirement to initiate having an Uphold wallet.

However thanks to a post by @scottcbusinessabout brave rewards I was able to get an account with Uphold in no time. Hence I began to enjoy the little monthly payments from the brave rewards programme. All that now appears to now be a thing of the past at least pending when the Brave team resolves the issue of limited verification for a few select countries.

I first observed that I could no longer login to verify my uphold wallet this month (September) in the Brave rewards section like I usually do once on a monthly basis. After several attempt I was getting a still processing screen. Then upon my last attempt I got a prompt that verification was no longer available in my region. I was taken aback as to the reason for this change in terms. Thus I began searching around the web for the reason for this .

Finally I came across a post in the Brave community discussion where the bombshell was dropped. The post indicated that from 12th July verification would only be available for participants in the Brave rewards programme who used UpHold wallets in only 18 countries which are :

• Australia

• Austria

• Belgium

• Canada

• Denmark

• Finland

• Hong Kong

• Ireland

• Italy

• Netherlands

• New Zealand

• Norway

• Portugal

• Singapore

• Spain

• Sweden

• United Kingdom

• United States

  The post continues to state that:

"For countries no longer on this list, Uphold and Brave will continually work together to evaluate whether such countries can be supported again, and how quickly.

Note that those who are currently verified in regions that are no longer supported will continue to be until they are naturally logged out over time, or press to disconnect Brave Rewards from their Uphold account. Once logged out or disconnected from Uphold, users in unsupported regions will not be able to log in again or re-verify Brave Rewards with Uphold."

Although there may be genuine reasons for this suspension while I suspect may be due to legal or regulatory in nature, the post left a lot of room for speculation as no definite reason was given for why the suspension had to be effected.

One post in the brave community forum remarked that the number of countries where verification seems to be steadily decreasing instead of increasing. He suggested that the reason for supporting less countries was to prevent users sending their earned BAT from the browser to other destinations or wallets.

Another question that comes to mind (which only the team at Brave can provide answers for) is if there's even any further need for the use of third party wallets such as Uphold and Gemini for the Brave rewards programme as Brave browser now has its own in built wallet.

Whatever the case may be Brave browser still remains browser of choice on my mobile device as it's adblocking service has been the best I have seen amongst all the browsers I have used thus far. I am open to suggestions as to any other browser which can outmatch it in this regards.