That is a great idea!
It's seemed rather tough to make more use of the actual currency for things. Honestly, I was rather surprised at first to not have seen an embedded item listing come up for people selling items on peerhub for SDB to put into their posts here. (I understand the why a bit better now, I think. Lol)
It's a very compelling pitch for that use case with everything you included in here. I think the only things that we'd need for this would be a 'seller reputation system' (that's independent from our blog reputation) and them just some process for when to disperse payments (unless the escrow functionality came around and I forgot.)
I guess an additional bonus on this would be on the tax side of things too...at least up front. (I'm sure the tax collectors would take notice if large transactions were taking place.)
Thanks! I have a wad of notes sitting on my desk now with ideas, as they come up-- I will be developing the "bones" of this one for a while, in hopes of creating a meaningful post that-- hopefully-- "the powers that be" might read and think "we could DO this. It has value."
In my short tenure here I have come to see the potential of Steemit... but it needs to deliver real world applications to truly grow into something of widespread interest to the general population. That means developing and implementing "features" that real people can use.
To echo your sentiments elsewhere, I am also encouraged by early adopters and influencers like @abit reading and interacting with these kinds of discussions around the site... makes me feel that there is broad community interest in building a long-term future for Steemit.