Nothing ever goes smoothly in this world and just when people thought ETH was on it's way to catching bitcoin the DAO happened and now we have something to grab the popcorn for and sit back and see which one comes out the winner, I am leaning towards ETC.
As a matter of principle, I also prefer largely ETC. I'm not invested in it at all (I don't do crypto apart from hodling a few bitcoin from long ago, at most I buy some coins with pocket money to play with and to buy a thing over the internet).
But I think that both reached more or less their level. ETH was on its way to become a bitcoin challenger, but the inevitable happened with the DAO, and that was a good thing, because ethereum is fundamentally flawed because of its too complex contract system which is Turing complete.
Maybe it will remain a playground for very small contracts. ETC would in principle be better, but I guess that ETH can be used too as they won't fork over tiny contracts. But essentially the dream is dead. There's a lot of money in ETH now, so they keep it alive amongst themselves. The split between ETC and ETH is consumed. But I don't see why either of them would take off. Rationally, one would think that the optimal spread of risk would bring the market caps of ETC and ETH together. But markets do not always behave as one would rationally expect.
In any case, the hype of complex smart contracts, and the "code is the law" is probably cooled off now, and without that hype, ETH has no genuine reason to exist, apart from the whales that have already money in it, and must keep the price on level.
We must thank the DAO hacker for stopping this madness in time, before it did real damage.
