Interesting Ethereum Dustup

[juan]

On Sat, 18 Jun 2016 03:41:12 +0300
Cari Machet <carimachet at gmail.com> wrote:

> goldman sachs is everywhere fucking

	
	yeah, what's needed here is not 'smart contracts' but a machine
	for mincing meat. 

	Anyway, on the topic of 'smart contracts' and all those
	mirrors and smoke

	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest_funded_crowdfunding_projects

	highest funded project is 

	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_%28organization%29

	with 160 millions (I think the wiki figure was 230 millions a
	couple of days ago - wikitrash isn't exactly reliable...)





> 
> On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 2:11 AM, jim bell <jdb10987 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> >
> > http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-17/blockchain-company-s-smart-contracts-were-dumb
> >
> >
> > Partial quote:
> >
> > Blockchain Company's Smart Contracts Were Dumb
> > 2
> > JUNE 17, 2016 5:46 PM EDT
> > By
> > Matt Levine
> > There's a fairly incredible trial going on in London right now. The
> > Libyan Investment Authority is suing Goldman Sachs over some trades
> > that they did together. To oversimplify slightly, the LIA handed
> > Goldman a pile of money and signed some complicated contracts
> > describing the circumstances in which Goldman would have to give
> > LIA money back, and how much. And then everyone closed their eyes
> > and counted to 10, and when they opened their eyes, poof, the money
> > was gone. It was $1.2 billion. Libya is mad, and suing. The LIA has
> > various arguments in its lawsuit, but none of them amount to
> > "Goldman owes us money under those contracts." The contracts
> > specified a set of functions that took inputs (mostly, the prices
> > of some bank stocks) and produced as outputs a set of dollar
> > amounts that Goldman was supposed to pay Libya. The specifications
> > in the contracts are perfectly clear; there's no dispute about how
> > to read the contracts, or about how the functions work. Everyone
> > agrees that the total dollar amount produced by the functions is
> > zero. Instead, Libya's arguments take the form of: We didn't really
> > mean what those contracts said. We didn't understand them. We were
> > bamboozled into signing them, overwhelmed by a "swarm" of Goldman
> > bankers, seduced -- literally -- by the bankers' offerings
> > ofinternships and aftershaves and prostitutes. We were
> > unsophisticated, we trusted Goldman to look out for our best
> > interests, we thought the functions were something other than what
> > they turned out to be. Whatever you think about those arguments --
> > my own views are complicated -- they are definitely the kinds of
> > arguments that are, like, allowed in court. The contracts
> > specifying the functions are important. Ninety-nine-point-whatever
> > percent of the time, derivatives contracts just work: I pay you a
> > premium for a call option, and you promise to pay me if it ends up
> > in the money, and if it does, you do, and if it doesn't, I shrug
> > and walk away. We knew what we were getting into, and we got out of
> > it what we expected. But every so often, people don't know what
> > they're getting into, or what they get out of it isn't what either
> > side reasonably expected. And when that happens, they go to court
> > and argue about it. Usually one side did well out of the deal, and
> > argues that everything's fine and everyone got what they expected;
> > the other side did poorly, and argues that something fundamentally
> > unfair happened and the deal should be altered. [end of portion
> > quoted]
> >
> 
> 
>