A few days ago, I logged in to my Uphold account and saw that I had over 2,000 Pesos worth of Bat, Basic Attention Token, which I got from using the Brave Browser.
I know that 2,000 Pesos worth of Bat means almost nothing to many Crypto enthusiast but, to me, it meant a few more days of food for the family specially during periods of lockdowns or in our case, ECQs.
When I saw that I had over 2,000 Pesos worth of Bat, I was very surprised and happy. Surprised because it was unexpected and happy because I had money for food and a few important things (like maintenance medicines).
Of course, having over 2,000 Pesos worth of BAT was useless to me unless I can convert it to actual cash and this was were the annoyance and frustration started.
Annoyance because I had to go through a lot of things just to cash out a little amount of money. I was not cashing out millions of US Dollars, I was only cashing out a couple of thousands of Pesos but I guess the level of annoyingness (if that is a word) was the same.
Frustration because I had to repeat and redo a lot of steps in the process because the process was confusing. Why do I have to authenticate with Authy and Google Authenticator every time I make an action and why use two different authenticators?
The happiness that I felt when I started the cashing out process slowly turned into slight anger. My slight anger was mainly directed towards the cashing out process. I even asked myself a question I couldn't answer and that was, why did they not make the process quick, simple and convenient?
After maybe two hours that felt like eternity, I was finally able to cash out my over 2,000 Pesos worth of Bat to CoinsPH and it was not a direct transfer to pesos.
So, from my Bat wallet in Uphold, I transferred the amount to my XRP wallet in CoinsPH, convert it to Pesos and cashed it out through GCash.
Cashing out from CoinsPH was not a big hassle unlike with Uphold. It was very straight forward and I did not have to authenticate twice neither with Authy or Google Authenticator. The authentication was done via e-mail.
Again, the money was spent on food and a few other important things. If we were not tight on cash and food was not a problem, I might have kept the money in Uphold a little longer but, sadly, that was not the case.
Also, going through the hassle of cashing out from Uphold, getting annoyed and frustrated was a learning experience I don't want to experience again. I'm hoping that the next time I try cashing out or taking out money from Uphold, the experience will be a lot better.
Also, if you are somewhat skeptic about earning Bat from using the Brave Browser then I can safely say that you don't have to be skeptic of it. The Brave Browser is legit, Bat is legit and you can turn it into real cash. Although, my experience cashing out was somewhat discouraging, I do believe it will get better in the future, hopefully!
I guess that's it for this somewhat long post about my experience on cashing out a small amount, an almost insignificant amount, of money from Uphold and using that money to survive a little bit longer on this world.
If I get another chance to cash out Bat or any other Cryptocurrency from Uphold again then I will definitely post about it and share the experience to all of you.
Thank you very much for reading this post!