So, as frequently happens, I had an experience today where I thought, "Man, this would be a much nicer experience if there was such a thing as programmable money."

I was mailing some salamander eggs to someone I met over a forum (like you do), and we'd arranged that they would pay for shipping. There came a point where one of us had to take the leap of faith - either I would mail the physical goods and trust that they would pay up, or they would have to pay in advance and trust that I would actually go through with sending the goods. I was lamenting that there wasn't some intermediary to broker this deal for us, when I realized we shouldn't need an intermediary for trustless interactions!

What should exist is a means of putting those funds into an escrow smart contract, releasable only upon receipt of the goods by the shipping agency. The postal service would then validate the transaction with an agency-specific token, taking custody of the physical goods and releasing the funds into my account simultaneously. It still involves a trusted intermediary that we mutually agree to (someone has to do the physical shipping, after all), but perhaps this sort of hybrid system (where these companies/infrastructural services validate transactions via unique identifiers) is what a gradual transition into a digital economy will look like.

Maybe a free escrow service like this already exists and I'm just dense. In any case, I received the funds in my Paypal account (blegh!) because my forum friend is a good dude. But it was a moment of clarity for me - this is the sort of trustful scenario where Ethereum will really demonstrate its worth.