You know, I wouldn't say it's so much a  "is MSC dead", but more like- has innovation in bitcoin technology moved from open community funded projects to less-open and venture capital backed projects?

At this point, I think the foundation should be thinking more seriously about how it's technology is going to compete in the PR realm against the technology being created by VC's, funded by VC's and used by VC's. Judith can put out as many updates as she would like (nothing against her BTW) but can that really match the Press Release cycle of VC funded companies that seem to take priority on the main Bitcoin news outlets?

I feel as though perhaps the first round of Bitcoin 2.0 technologies have lost their steam before really getting a chance to take off and investors seem to be looking to other sources of bitcoin innovation.

Perhaps I'm a pessimist at times, but the lack of movement in MSC trading- (and other bitcoin2.0 projects) seems to point to a greater obstacle at hand than just simply getting the technology working. While the Mastercoin Team and counterparty teams are hard at work making the technology work- the Venture Capital backed projects seem more interested in earning the trust of their future clients and taking their millions to build the technology that makes it work, later.