[Karunamon]

Now compare financial loss from bugs/hackers in smart contracts to financial loss from deception on the part of bankers, brokers, company execs, etc - the exact kind of fraud that's much harder to perpetrate with smart contracts. I'd wager the second number is and always will be orders of magnitude larger.

Enron alone was responsible for ~$74bn of loss.

[joosters]

There's plenty of fraud going on with smart contracts and blockchains in general, and everyone knows it. In fact, it offers newer and easier ways to commit fraud. How many ICOs walked away with their investors' money? How many exchange and smart contract 'hacks' were actually insider jobs?

Just because crypto currency is a smaller market than traditional finance doesn't mean it's more honest. I'd imagine the % of fraudulent transactions in ethereum is worryingly high.

[Karunamon]

It's important to differentiate here.. fraud by deception is only partly mitigated - if some slick sales droid convinces you to dump your life savings into a dodgy ICO, that's really not all that different to what Bernie Madoff did.

The critical difference is that the smart contract lets you peek under the covers. If the contract allows for its owners to do things to your tokens, that will be plainly visible in the code, regardless of what the owner says. The owners can lie about it, but the lie can be seen by all and sundry. The creators of the token mathematically cannot do anything the contract doesn't allow them to do.

[deeeeplearning]

>How many ICOs walked away with their investors' money?

A sucker is born every day, this has little to do with the underlying tech though.

[dragonwriter]

> Now compare financial loss from bugs/hackers in smart contracts to financial loss from deception on the part of bankers, brokers, company execs, etc

But be sure, in doing so, to compare them as a share of total transactions made through smart contracts vs. the total involving 'bankers, brokers, company execs, etc.'