I always thought that between Bitcoin and Ethereum only the latter had a virtual machine.
The answer to this thread opened my eyes to the fact that Bitcoin actual has a virtual machine. However, I wonder if there's a distinction between the two in terms of what is being categorized as 'virtual machine'. For instance, the EVM can run smart contracts. It's unclear to me whether one can do something similar in the Bitcoin virtual machine. But then again this distinction may not be necessary nor sufficient to claim that Bitcoin does not have a virtual machine similar to Ethereum's.