Any industry or operations where intermediaries are needed becauses of a lack of trust between first parties can be desintermediated by a distributed trust network:

- Art transactions: registry of origin and property transfers for any object (with authenticated certificate), currently done by lawyers & auction houses (costly, inefficient, painful, near-impossible in some cases)

- International shipping: INCOTERMS, currently handled through various specialized intermediaries (costly, inefficient, painful)

- Registry of operations over the life of a company (creation/address change/acquisitions/foreclosure), currently done by national commerce courts & accredited local newspapers (costly, inefficient, painful)

- Wills: self-authentication of one's will preventing repudiation attempts by third parties, currently done by lawyers and witnesses (costly, inefficient, painful)

- Escrow accounts for service providers (ex freelancers) through multisig wallets (inefficient)

Art transactions: Just the other day there was a long discussion on here about a guy who managed to convince a blockchain that he owned the Mona Lisa.

Interesting, do you have a link?

To me blockchain in Art is less useful as a way to prove some ex-nihilo ownership than as an unalterable chain of ownership transfers. Of course that works as long as noone gets their hands on Musée du Louvre's private keys.

Here's the HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17292476