I have no problem with crypto, provided the people making the service aren't the same as the people making the cryptocurrency, yet that's what Brave did.
Here's how it should've worked:
Brave includes an ad-blocker but default
Brave talks to websites about a profit sharing option for sites - Brave would serve the ads using only local browsing history, the website gets most of the revenue (alternative is no revenue due to the ad blocker)
Brave creates an option for users to pay in lieu of seeing ads
Step 3 is where crypto comes in. Users could choose to pay in crypto, credit card, etc, and they'd fund a pool of money to be used for that (always for this site, ask every time, never for this site). Likewise, if websites prefer crypto, Brave could support that.
The whole problem though is trying to pay users with crypto, which tells me this currency was always going to be problematic since Brave benefits from it reducing in value (reduces their payout).
So I don't use Brave for personal stuff, I only use it as a Chrome alternative for web testing because it has an ad blocker.