[wmf]

people don't want to pay anything for digital goods

Which brings up a different problem: Web3 assumes that everything you do online will cost money. Even assuming that fees go to zero, virtually nobody wants that. Web3 advocates will say that the money you earn will offset what you spend, but you only have to look at Patreon/Substack/OnlyFans earnings to see that it won't happen for most people.

[FridgeSeal]

It also strikes me that there’s an implicit requirement to “already have sufficient capital” to operate in the crypto space - even more so that normal finance. I don’t see middle-to-low income people being willing to adopt this as any interaction will burn even more of a limited resource than normal mechanisms.

If the majority of people can’t get in, or can’t afford to do anything in the space, is there any real chance this will actually take off?

Now I’m sure someone will respond along the lines of “crypto is an investment/asset not a currency, etc etc etc” in which case, why is it trying to do all these currency things?

[wmf]

Buy $10 of crypto, use play-to-earn to turn it into $100, then you can afford to use Web3. /sarcasm

[IanCal]

Arguably, everything does. You just also either sell something at the same time or someone else subsidises it for you. Neither of those approaches are forbidden in web3. It may be more explicit at least.

More generally though, "everything" there means state changing operations. Read only doesn't.