For once someone who sees the issue of the high cost of account creation. The reason it's no longer free the excuse is anti-spam. They can keep the 3 steem burn but the rc cost to create an account is 800-1000x more expensive than any other transaction on the chain.
No company is going to be looking to spend a million dollars for 300k users which they would have a better chance of getting more users cheaper on a non-blockchain based chain with that million dollars going to marketing. So it would be better to have them power up that 300k steem and claim accounts via account credits. They would also be able to benefit the users who come in with delegation and upvotes for content creation as well.
Right now we're looking at like 40+ years to a billion users if we ever want that big of a community which should be the goal to be a household chain. The price for rc claims should be dropped by 10x what they are now. Which is completely ignored when i bring it up.