Consider a few simple examples - It is possible to buy crypto purely peer to peer e.g just 2 people posting on a forum. Yet, most people buy it on an exchange

Consider a few simple examples - It is possible to buy crypto purely peer to peer e.g just 2 people posting on a forum. Yet, most people buy it on an exchange and pay the transaction fees. It is possible to set up a wordpress server on your home PC or a cheap VPS, yet most people buy it off wordpress.com It is possible to replicate an ETF with relatively low effort by just looking up their holdings every month and rebalancing, yet most people pay the ETF fees. It is possible to make great coffee at home yet people go to coffee shops. --- The main idea IMO is just relying on people to be willing to buy into whatever new thing has a lot of marketing and hype behind it. They consistently do. Even if web3 is a truly open system, people will remain too apathetic to learn how that system works - they will just go to the most popular platform and pay the fee. --- The other angle IMO is that banks and tradfi in a lot of places really do suck hard. They don't need to innovate at all and rarely do. The only reason they don't have competition is piles of red tape, regulation, lobbying, corruption etc. All it takes is someone to make a half-decent website/app that makes things a little better (e.g Robinhood) and crypto is a way to do that while getting around all the old regulation.