Smart contracts don't “simplify contracts"

The premise of the initial tweet is spot-on (though I think she gets lost in the weeds a bit after that). People who think smart contracts are going to simplify any substantial percentage of contract use cases need to the understand the pain points of dumb contracts. The main reason dumb contracts are litigated is ambiguity, which is not a problem smart contracts are designed to solve.

Imagine that you have a contract to build a website for somebody. 50% up front and 50% when the site is done. So the key word there is "done" right? (and "done", here, can be a proxy for more specific terms, the principle is the same) A smart contract is designed to complete the transaction once the bit is flipped, but there's still the decision behind who gets to flip the bit. I.E. who decides when the thing is "done". The smart contract is not designed to deal with the ambiguity of the word "done".

So the types of problems a smart contract can deal with are those for which it is feasible to reduce the terms to binary states. Escrow is a good example. I can verify that x dollars moved into account A, so I will move y dollars from account B to account C. But the number of use cases like this are a small percentage of reasons you might want to contract in the first place.

There maybe some sort of smart contract framework that comes along to deal with the ambiguity issues, but for now, smart contract use cases are quite limited in scope.

Saying you hate BTC because of smart contracts doesn’t make much sense because smart contracts are not a primary feature of the Bitcoin Blockchain. Also the main argument that most Crypto haters have is “bitcoin is only good for illegal stuff”. There are many many other blockchain and Decentralized applications not just bitcoin, bitocoin was the pioneer. And if I take law for example like the writer we all know these centralized systems are ripe with fraud, corruption and illegal activities. Lastly there is no need to hate Blockchain at all, it’s an innovative technology that can benefit everyone on the planet.

Smart contract is a misnomer. Neither the author nor those she is criticizing understand what a smart contract is.

Smart contracts formalize contracts.