[abaga129]

Smart contracts are huge in crypto currency and are likely here to stay. Afaik all of the top 10 crypto currencies by market cap have smart contracts or plan to have them except bitcoin and tether.

They power decentralized apps and defi. Without them then a blockchain doesn't have much utility aside from processing transactions.

[pennaMan]

>except bitcoin and tether

Tether is a smart contract itself

[vimy]

Bitcoin has smart contracts now.

[G3rn0ti]

Bitcoin‘s scripting is not Turing complete and therefore does not lend itself easily to sophisticated smart contracts. It will probably always be limited to variations on money transfers.

However, Bitcoiners consider this an advantage as this makes it less vulnerable to exploits. And the Lightning Network is quite an exciting development.

I consider the competition between the two networks good as they are exploring different but nonetheless useful niches.

[ur-whale]

> Bitcoin has smart contracts now.

Mmmh, that's a little bit of a stretch.

They're building infrastructure (eg taproot) with a goal to support them in the future.

But doing ETH-like dapps on Bitcoin is nowhere near ready (or, if you listen to some Bitcoin folks, even desirable).

[emerged]

Well to be fair, blockchain doesn’t have much utility with them either.