[ellius]

"3. You can buy things with bitcoin. What can you buy with ETH? If you can't buy anything with a currency, it's not a currency."

This is the one that really sticks out to me. What do people need any of this for? I think they did a fine job pitching the value of smart contract / blockchain technology. But why do I, or a bank, or society need anything beyond those?

The tech may be useful, but what 99% of these discussions come down to is whether you think a decentralized currency and disintermediated payments system have value. I don't really see the need for the vast majority of society to have the former in the long run, and I think the latter is actively harmful and impractical. Like you pointed out, you're inevitably going to have these code failures, disagreements, etc. Those are basic failures of any human-designed and human-negotiated system. As far as those go, I still prefer to wager my business on the time-worn technology of English common law.

As far as the tech goes, yes, banks should get behind some of this. Their infrastructure is garbage and could well benefit from associations of private chains and the like.

[erikpukinskis]

> What do people need any of this for?

I can write an app for managing a business, fund it, and then walk away forever. Ethereum is a platform for hosting autonomous corporations.

[iamatworknow]

Is that something we want? Because it doesn't sound like something I want.

I like that there's some level of the human element in the personal transactions I conduct with businesses, and I don't think I'm alone given how hackneyed the joke about bypassing automated phone support systems has become. If something falls outside company procedures there's usually someone who can help me out by bending the rules or deferring to a superior who can make an exception, or at the very least explain why it can't be done. Empathy plays a role.

If the entire business transaction is automated sure, maybe the more mundane everyday processes run smoother, but if there's an exception that wasn't accounted for you're shit out of luck.

[kolinko]

> I like that there's some level of the human element in the personal transactions I conduct with businesses, and I don't think I'm alone[...]

I'm quite sure the same argument was being used by many brick and mortar stores at the dawn of e-commerce.

In certain businesses empathy matters, in many of them it doesn't. There are also businesses that would never be built without the blockchain - and that's the most interesting part.

[iamatworknow]

>I'm quite sure the same argument was being used by many brick and mortar stores at the dawn of e-commerce.

It was, but even then every e-commerce company has a chain of escalation that, at some point, ends at a human who isn't controlled by an algorithm. Setting your business logic and "walking away" as the original comment said wouldn't have that escalation path. If it does, then how is it much different from the way things work now?

[rocqua]

The main 'value' of ETH is in buying 'gas' for your smart contracts. Basically, you need ETH to use the Ethereum network.

So it makes more sense to view it as a commodity.