Quote from: UberNifty on January 17, 2015, 08:57:13 AM

Agreed, overall. However, Smart Contracts would at least bind the loan / collateral to the blockchaian it was issued to; [n]whereby making it a legally-enforceable contract between the buyer and the seller[/b] (or two traders, in the case of a barter arrangement).

NXT does start to address this issue with the ability to issue a NXT-backed MS altcoin held in escrow via Smart Contract; based on the defined properties and terms (i.e. block height expiry, etc.) The SAE currently has a relatively primitive Smart Contract available, albeit the true power of Smart Contracts is rumoured to be released around v1.7 or 1.8 of the NXT wallet client.

No it does not. All a "smart" contract does is ensure that certain cryptographically verifiable conditions are met. If there are no such conditions then parties are not protected