Brave expands Basic Attention Token platform to YouTube

Yeah this isn't going to fly with Youtube itself, they're not going to host ad-free videos so that a 3rd party can take their nontrivial portion of the ad revenue.

Schemes like this are nice, but don't forget who pays for hosting, serving and promoting the content.

I think you might be misunderstanding how it works. Its essentially Patreon. Will it work? Who knows. Can youtube stop it from happening? Probably not any more than they can stop Patreon.

But then the question becomes what do these guys offer which Patreon doesnt?

Still my understanding is that Patreon doesn't automatically allow people to view YT videos ad free. Sure people get donations and the amount of donations drive the number of videos etc but they don't go into YT's territory.

I may be misunderstanding something, since I'm not a youtube creator, but couldn't someone sufficiently comfortable with the other revenue streams they have at their disposal voluntarily choose to demonetize their own youtube videos?