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A little less than a month ago, the Bitcoin miners around the world signaled enough in the affirmative to start accepting Taproot around November 12th of this year. For those who follow the price of Bitcoin and may be sitting on the sidelines, this upgrade not only is a monster but lays the foundation for further development of the network. In that it is the first upgrade in four years is a positive sign, as the Bitcoin community is not only decentralized, it may be a higher threshold than an Act of Congress to upgrade to the network.

But the secrets behind Taproot, with the ability behind a better network efficiency as well as higher levels of privacy for transactions, may unlock a much higher price that could be an all-time high above $100,000. The serendipity at which Taproot arrives and where regulation is at should also add value to the proposition of Bitcoin.

This piece takes a look at some of the tech at a very high level to help explain Taproot in laymens terms. Additionally, explanations and further details are expanded upon by two interviews. To start down the tech path, lets take a look at a quote that first introduced Taproot. The special case of a top level threshold-signature OR arbitrary-conditions can be made indistinguishable from a normal one-party signature, with no overhead at all, with a special delegating CHECKSIG which I call Taproot, said Gregory Maxwell in his introduction of the concept of Taproot in 2018.

Taproot uses three types of technologies that we will have one of our two experts explain. One of the experts was privacy advocate D++, a revolutionary cypherpunk and Bitcoin maximalist, offered her view of the potential price impact of Taproot.

Taproot makes Bitcoin better...but the price is not built in, says D++ who views the potential for ... [+] greater institutional adoption as a result of the upgrade to the network. D++ is a pseudonym for the leader of plebnet.org and can be regularly heard on the 'Clubhouse' app explaining the technology of Bitcoin.

Taproot makes Bitcoin better...and is not yet priced in, says D++ who views the potential for greater institutional adoption as a result of the upgrade to the network. She celebrates this amazing new technology: Bitcoin Script and smart contract improvements, plus multisig transactions including Lighting channels now all look the same, resulting in added privacy.

Nadav Kohen, Security Engineer at Suredbits, helps explain very complicated Bitcoin and Lightning coding and technical aspects, which typically the rest of the audience picks up from either a base layer or additional layer of technical understanding in how Bitcoin works.

According to Nadav Kohen, Software Engineer at Suredbits, "[Bitcoin] is still a pseudonymous network ... [+] and that all the details of every transaction are available, just not publicly visible." in explaining the Taproot upgrade.

With Taproot, a Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree (MAST) hashes all the different spending conditions of a contract; however, the use of Schnoor signatures permit the transactions executed to be more private. To further explain, Schnoor signatures are a different form of digital signature than what has powered the network from the beginning:Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA).

Taproot is also critical in that the Bitcoin community implemented this change as a soft fork, meaning the changes are backwards compatible. The Bitcoin network is conservative and we dont make backward incompatible changes...the argument could be made it isnt right to deny Satoshi his coins with a backwards incompatible change, says Kohen, security engineer at Suredbits.

Kohen is excited that Taproot provides a foundation where, ...the improvements lay the groundwork for future potential upgrades that may improve efficiency, privacy, and fungibility further. D++ has been a participant on many Clubhouse chats discussing both Bitcoin and lightning networks, took some time to explain to me her excitement about Taproot.

D++ noted that, consensus for upgrading Bitcoin is very difficult. In 2017 there were ... the Blocksize wars... infighting which led to PTSD and resulting disagreement as to how to update Bitcoin going forward. This time, however, she points out there is a concerted effort that, Everyone wants Taproot to be upgraded in the community, and the new Speedy Trial activation method ended up being a smashing success that will likely be replicated in the future.

Taproot is now locked in and will be released around November 12. What to expect? D++ describes the upgrades as, ...cool: Schnorr signatures, Taproot, and Merkelized Abstract Syntax Trees means privacy and scaling enhancements on Bitcoin. However, transactions are not entirely private, rather they are still pseudonymous and visible on a public ledger. D++ noted Taproot simply obfuscates details so multisig is not apparent with Taproot.

Read more:
Are Institutional Investors Undervaluing The Taproot Upgrade To Bitcoin? - Forbes