[acdha]

> the author does not mention many of the highly plausible use cases for trustless and permissionless services such as replacing rent seeking P2P marketplaces like eBay (where the advantage is cost reduction) or online Poker sites (where the advantage is manipulation resistance).

Both of those claims are severely in need of support before you can attack the author for not mentioning them. eBay doesn’t cost what it does because there’s no other way to send money online – it’s things like discovery, fraud protection, etc. which are necessary either way. It’s similarly non-obvious how magic blockchain pixie dust could address the challenges which online gambling actually has.

[gh1]

You are right. Discovery, fraud protection and many other functions need to be there either way. When I say cost reduction, I mean getting rid of any additional premiums which eBay (or any corporation for that matter) levies because of their strong position in the market.

As for the problems of online poker, the Virtue Poker whitepaper is a good starting point about why blockchain is indeed that magic pixie dust[0]

[0]https://virtue.poker/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Virtue-Poker...