That's not correct.
Brave awards aren't enabled by default, and you have to manually to opt in for it to work.
Yes the button is there, but you can just hide it.
"Show Brave Rewards icon in address bar" is the only setting you really need to disable. Every once in a while they launch a new feature related to crypto i.e. in the new tab page but generally they're pretty good at letting you opt out entirely.
You can disable the ads on the new tab page too.
At least on the mobile version it seems to be. You get a popup letting you know about BAT when you visit some sites, and whenever you open a new tab the page usually have some background or story about NFT's or some other crypto thing.