PayPal [owned by eBay and is eBay's created means of making payments] does not accept BTC payments yet. If eBay (PayPal) had accepted BTC payments, this would not have occurred.
If ebay decided to act as an escrow service, it could still have occurred - but with ebay taking on the burden of every single such instance (similar to paypal/credit card).
This also would not have occurred if...
on eBay, paid [...] using BTC (I know, I know..)
...he hadn't acted on what he knew was a bad idea... and also
against e-bay's rules.
No schadenfreude here - if the seller doesn't deliver, they can go rot somewhere, and I'm hoping this will be resolved positively for Prelude. But let's not slight the platform for a user's sidestepping.