What size transaction do you think it helps with? My transaction fees are usually zero, even internationally, with the only exception being trivial costs when I visited the USA. Conversely, when I bought a flat I was legally required to add the much larger in-all-but-name transaction fee of having a lawyer sign off that I and my money and my payment of it and the flat itself and the seller I was buying it from were all legit, and still would have had that even if I'd used BTC.

I think the argument for this would be that things like smart contracts could do away with lawyers and such.

Except who vets the smart contracts? How does the customer execute the transaction in a fool proof way?

You've perfectly hit why "Smart Contracts" are perhaps literally the worst named thing in tech. They're not smart, and they're not contracts.

In real life, the things we "Contracts" are not the the execution of the transaction itself, they are the written statement that attempts to describe the intent of the parties and most importantly -- what you do if things go wrong.

Despite what I've said above, I will definitely go full Luddite and say we are not remotely close to a world in which the lawyers are not needed.

They're definitely contracts, just programming ones, not legal.

While I'm generally not a language prescriptivist, I gotta say no here. In real life, up until now, AFAIK we have NEVER used the word "contract" to refer to the underlying act that the contract is about. We've ALWAYS used it to refer to the associated documentation/statements of intent about the humans involved.

"Building a house" is not a contract. It's an act.

They're NOT CONTRACTS. They're automated transaction robots.

> up until now

I gave up telling people not to call cryptocurrency "crypto" — I would suggest suggesting a better term, or expect to be disappointed/it to continue.

Again, different -- This isn't a mere choice of word thing. It's that uninformed people are making harmful, and perhaps even stupid, choices because they are relying on an effectively false phrase -- where the "real version" of the thing is essentially a safety mechanism, and overzealous tech bro types absolutely incorrectly believe that their thing can replace the real thing.

Now, as a lawyer, I could just sit back and wait for the f**ups to happen and get paid cleaning them up -- and I might -- but also, I like the idea of warning people as well.

In a world where people think the phrase "autopilot" means the pilot of the plane can take a nap, I think we're doomed to disappointment.

Your transaction fees are zero. Most people sending money through western union don't share that rate and western union requires id and travel to a pickup place.

That sounds like a problem with Western Union, not a problem with e.g. USD.