Why would either end users want to put $ into BAT, or content creators accept BAT in lieu of dollar given the massive volatility of BAT relative to $?
If I had stocked up my wallet with $ over the summer, those $'s I exchanged could be up to about 35% less now. We're discussing saving pennies on transaction costs while we lost massive amounts on exchange rate slippage and volatility. This is ridiculously silly, why would creators or users go for this? If you want to say creators will immediately exchange for $, then we must consider trading fees & effort/friction to doing so.
But for users, storing any significant value in a wallet for a more than a day or so is a non starter.
These are common criticisms against cryptocurrency in general, and the answer is pretty much this:
Normally, to accept digital donations, I'd need to have something like a Paypal account, and follow their terms of service (or that of another company like Patreon). If I do anything that company doesn't like, like produce and sell fireworks or draw porn, they will forbid me from using their service and users will be unable to donate to me. Or if I'm in Venezuela and the US embargo the country, the company might block donations to me because they have to by US law.
Cryptocurrencies try to solve this problem by being "neutral" in a way, nobody central truly owns it, and nobody can based on preference, policy or political reasons forbid users from using the system.
Absolutely, and so we're back to (in my opinion) the main valid arguments for cryptocurrency: censorship resistant transactions, and store of value through absolute scarcity immune to political desire to debauch fiat money.
The second case arguably devolves, game-theory wise to the market never valuing subsequent new currencies with much significance compared to Bitcoin. It's the same argument I made above, just replace Bitcoin for $. Why hold BAT if some new crypto might come along and be better. Opening oneself up to appeals to new, "better" currencies based on features means there's never any trust, incentive to, or faith in holding current ones. Those that take this to logical conclusion will only/mostly value Bitcoin.
There will always be some floor on many of these currencies based on censorship resistance, but again that's niche relative to addressable market... and those who in their own minds won't get kicked off payment processors won't have use for a less censorable one. Of course, BAT is less decentralized than Bitcoin so not sure it's immune to political influence (we know who runs Brave).
Donations generally can be achieved with Bitcoin of course. Micro-payment currencies being stable relative to alternatives is the point of contention here. I don't see stability coming anytime soon, therefore I don't see large adoption either. I'll happy to be surprised though.
Important to note that the Brave browser + BAT are also achieving a more private browsing experience compared to a corporate browser and 3rd party ads allowing the tech to be abused to gather as much data on you as possible.
If I had stocked up my wallet with $ over the summer, those $'s I exchanged could be up to about 35% less now. We're discussing saving pennies on transaction costs while we lost massive amounts on exchange rate slippage and volatility. This is ridiculously silly, why would creators or users go for this? If you want to say creators will immediately exchange for $, then we must consider trading fees & effort/friction to doing so.
But for users, storing any significant value in a wallet for a more than a day or so is a non starter.