RE: Next 10-12 days....Closing in on optimisation testing phase15 Jun 2021 09:43
For The invested,
Bitcoin Confirms Massive New Upgrade As Competition From Ethereum, Cardano, Binance’s BNB And Dogecoin Heats Up.
Story in Forbes yesterday:
Bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency by value with a market capitalization of around $750 billion, has confirmed its first upgrade in four years.
Bitcoin miners—those who secure the bitcoin network and validate transactions in return for bitcoin tokens—approved the long-awaited upgrade, known as taproot, that’s due to take effect in November.
Taproot, the most anticipated upgrade to the bitcoin protocol since segregated witness (SegWit) in 2017, is expected to improve bitcoin’s privacy and efficiency via a new signature scheme known as Schnorr that will replace bitcoin’s current elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA).
Taproot is a very important upgrade that allows new levels of development hitherto impossible on bitcoin’s blockchain and further cements bitcoin’s position as the most relevant of all cryptocurrencies,” says Quantum Economics’ bitcoin analyst Jason Deane, speaking via Telegram. “In our view, the potential impact is probably not yet fully understood by the wider community, but this is likely to be become clearer over time.”
Over the weekend, the required threshold for taproot support was crossed by bitcoin miners, locking in the “landmark” upgrade that signals the bitcoin network can evolve peacefully.
“[Taproot is] a big landmark in that it demonstrates a new activation pathway which is apparently functional,” says cryptocurrency venture capitalist Nic Carter, speaking via Twitter DM. “The technical change is important and warranted but to me, the most salient point is the fact that bitcoin governance and the upgrade process works.”
Bitcoin’s last upgrade came in the midst of bitcoin’s block size civil war that resulted in the creation of bitcoin cash, a fork of bitcoin that is better suited to smaller payments.
“Taproot adds important new functionality to the bitcoin protocol. But perhaps more important is that its adoption was nearly unanimous. In the wake of the block size war of 2017, the smooth taproot upgrade is a demonstration of strong consensus about the direction of base layer protocol development,” says Cory Klippsten, the chief executive of bitcoin-buying app Swan Bitcoin, speaking via Telegram.
“Nothing old breaks, everything new is entirely optional. That’s the bitcoin way. This is powerful functionality for many use cases, and also demonstrates that we should be able to add whatever is required in the future.”
The bitcoin price has jumped over the weekend, though that’s largely been put down to Tesla billionaire Elon Musk confirming his electric car company plans to eventually resume bitcoin payments
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