I'm not very knowledgeable about Web3, but what you point out, I also find confusing. Why do I need to use ETH to buy an NFT -- my credit card should just do fine -- shouldn't it?

Clicking the "Connect My Wallet" button is kind of fun. But I feel like I've gained nothing over just using my credit card -- in fact my credit card provides me (as the consumer) tons more benefit than using ETH -- and don't get me started on gas fees!

There's work happening now to make this a reality by partnering with on-ramps and off-ramps to go from fiat to crypto.

One can imagine a world in which this is completely transparent to the end user.

High ETH gas fees are also being solved by Layer 2 solutions which get fees down to cents by either batching transactions or doing the work off the main chain and posting only the proofs to the main ETH chain. Checkout zero knowledge rollups, aka zk-rollups.

You can't buy most NFTs with ETH, right? First you have to pay ETH-level fees to buy 'wrapped' ETH?

Rollup solutions like StarkNet and StarkEx on Ethereum will make apps gas-free.

What happens if Visa/Mastercard decides to block the merchant you want to use? Or you yourself are a merchant that gets hit with high fees simply because you're in a business that is deemed "high-risk"

Fair, but that seems like a really really small segment of the market assuming it's legal. For 99% of businesses I don't think this is an issue.

I seem to remember pornhub being hit by this, which is why they removed unverified content. Perhaps it's also why OnlyFans decided to ban explicit content a few months back (before backpedaling).

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/10/business/visa-mastercard-...

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/20/tech/onlyfans-explicit-co...