Just imagine how different the Internet would look like today if receiving payments would’ve been as easy as receiving email from the beginning.

That it is not trivial for a single person on the Internet to receive payments without a third-party involved, in my mind, leads directly to an Internet that is based on ads and on monopolies:

You can’t make a living posting stuff online on your own private website. Because since you cannot receive money, any value that you add online can never be translated into value offline. So you need to post on someone else’s site, which then acts as a publisher, and has the economies of scale necessary to make taking payments viable. Or otherwise, you need to monetize your content by placing ads, again, using some middleman, who is big enough to be able to afford access to payments.