Counterparty Recreates Ethereum's Smart Contract Platform on Bitcoin (opens in new tab)

You're right, I corrected my top post.

(Disclosure: I own ether, but not XCP)

Well, both platforms require you to use a new currency (ether and XCP currency.) Counterparty will make it easier to write contracts that involve bitcoins (I think, not totally sure how that works) ethereum will have a 12 second block time vs a 10 minute block time (very different) and ethereum transaction costs should be lower (for several reasons.)

Additionally, counterparty will probably launch their product first.

Also, ethereum is only one piece of a much larger technology stack being worked on, linking contracts to things like private messages between users, a file distribution system, a webkit-based webrowser/wallet system, etc. Additionally, ethereum can support SPV, a technology very relevant for mobile apps, which apparently isn't possible with a XCP-type system.

(Counterparty also has add-on technologies, but I'm not that familiar with their stack.)

Here's a reply from our very own Joseph, which details a bit more the differences: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2m30j6/counterpart...

Counterparty has a production release which is entirely functional, and in active use (I think they just hit 100k transactions). In fact, it's usually responsible for 1-2% of Bitcoin's daily transaction volume. The contract feature was just announced today, but Counterparty's development is very quick, and the feature will be in production soon, judging by their pace thus far. The project went from starting out in January, to securing the Overstock deal in November. Compared to Ethereum's glacial pace, I'd not be surprised if these contracts are in production before Ethereum even enters beta.

Yes. And 'catching up' with the blockchain is much faster before, with this set of changes (only a couple of hours on my machine): https://github.com/CounterpartyXCP/counterpartyd/pull/409