Re: Hmm I thought 'smart' contracts meant no laywers
"It was my impression that a smart contract was code that defined what was supposed to happen. Since the code is the contract, it is always the 'law', thus eliminating messy lawyer paper shuffling and court disputes."
Code can shuffle electrons about. The electrons can represent Bitcoin, dollars, pounds, euros or any other currency and, providing it's bug-free it might well be 'law'. As soon as you want to swap those electrons for something else, such as food, it ceases to have any real effect.
Yes, you can have the code operate a vending machine but you still require someone to have filled the machine with what it's supposed to contain. As soon as someone didn't you've stepped outside the realm of code into real law to get it resolved.
In this case we're told it wasn't even bug-free so it wasn't even effective 'law'.