Compared to Bitcoin, Ethereum is not intended to be used as a currency. It is a fuel in the smart contract system.
But you can still use it as a currency. For example, you can use it to invest into the DAO. That is regarded as money.
The DAO is a smart contract... One that I had the misfortune of becoming ensnared in. So far, my experience with both ETH and the DAO has been
unsatisfactory. I'm surprised there are not a whole lot more of these tokens/smart contracts coming out of the woodwork. With such few lines of code needed to implement a smart contract, I would think these scam tokens/"smart??" contracts would be multiplying like cockroaches. These poor DAO people. Now every time they want to vote, they have to make sure their coffers are filled up with ETH for the gas. They can't even use their DAO to pay the gas, like it works with any regular cryptocurrency. They must buy ETH. No wonder most of the curators of the DAO are also big names for the ETH.
For me, I think Bitcoin will always be ahead of ETH. Pretty soon, there is going to be s great deal of smart contracts bloating the ETH blockchain. The vast majority of these smart contracts/tokens are going to be absolute shit. It's going to be a bloated mess that will be in desperate need of an enema.
