I’ve long been generally skeptical of crypto currencies but otherwise confident that blockchain will ultimately find sensible and scalable use cases. That being said, I’ve yet to understand the fundamental value proposition of blockchain in so called “smart contracts”, which I define (based upon descriptions from others) as contracts that, in whole or in part, after becoming effective take as inputs data from external sources and execute various agreements/transactions automatically on the basis of those inputs. My questions in that arena have always been: 1) what does blockchain accomplish with respect to this automatic execution of a transaction as described above that “normal” software cannot accomplish and 2) how do customary exceptions and conditions in contracts – ie complexity – which are often vaguely defined (and intentionally so) become appropriate integrated into such frameworks. The complications inherent in 2 above have always fueled the question of 1 above even further. Smart contracts could, perhaps, be relied upon to execute the simplest agreements; but can’t non-blockchain software do so swimmingly, already? It’s always felt like something crucial is lost on me, here, but I have yet to discover what it is.