Thanks a lot for your thoughts. You're right in that upvoting (curating) for the pleasure of it is a better way to go than the "you can get rich" hard sell. And, Steem would benefit a lot if a small-amount fiat gateway were set up for it. The trouble is, PayPal has a bad reputation in cryptocurrency land because it allows, or at least used to allow, refunds for anyone who asked for one; they pegged virtual currencies as suspicious (potentially scammy) goods. So, some malicious buyers found out that they could get cryptocurrency "free" by sending in a refund request after receiving the crypto they bought. The refund funds came of course from the sellers' accounts; they got bilked.

Maybe PayPal has improved since it became notorious for that; maybe...