Jimmy Donaldson, aka “MrBeast,” a prominent YouTuber boasting 50.2 million subscribers and 8.5 billion total views, now owns a verified Brave browser account — potentially exposing some of his enormous audience to virtual currency.
Donaldson is not new to crypto and is believed to have made a considerable amount of money via cryptocurrency investments. The star previously hosted videos discussing crypto before his channel exploded in popularity and he reportedly purchased a $100,000 car using his crypto profits. However, his account was later purged of all content relating to virtual currency.
MrBeast also spoke on Keemstar’s podcast about how he almost lost his BTC due to a house break-in, but managed to move the funds to a new wallet.
With Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies surging in price, the famous YouTuber appears to be making a return to crypto, by becoming a verified Brave browser publisher. This will allow viewers to tip his channel with BAT tokens — the native Brave browser crypto.
Brave, founded by JavaScript creator Brendan Eich, rose in popularity over the last two years — attracting almost 1 million publishers and more than 24 million active monthly users. The browser currently has 528,756 YouTube, 126,740 Twitter, and 69,000 website and Twitch publishers.
The addition of MrBeast to Brave’s growing list of publishers has some in the community predicting large price increases for the BAT token. According to Coingecko, BAT tokens are currently trading for $0.254 each, up 9.5% over the past 24 hours.
MrBeast is far from the first prominent YouTuber to embrace crypto. In 2019, PewDiePie, who once held the most subscribed channel with more than 100 million subscribers, began hosting his streams on the blockchain video platform Dlive. However, on May 4, 2020, YouTube signed an exclusive deal with him, preventing him from continuing to use Dlive.