BTC TAPROOT upgrade is huge and should be mentioned more

The last major upgrade to Bitcoin happened in 2017, and right now, there's not much use to it other than to transfer money from A to B.

Luckily, a technological overhaul has finally come. Over 90% of Bitcoin miners have approved an upgrade for this upcoming November. The upgrade, known as Taproot, will improve the efficiency and privacy of the network and could catalyze a major boost in Bitcoin's price.

Two changes to the Bitcoin network's underlying code (or protocol) will take place with the Taproot upgrade. The first is replacing the cryptocurrency's Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm with that of the Schnorr Signature Algorithm. Sounds complicated, but here's what it means for all of us. If 10 different users sent BTC to a single wallet address (public key) under the current setup, it would appear on Bitcoin's ledger as 10 separate transactions. But using SSA, Bitcoin's network will be able to bundle these 10 transactions into one transaction with a unique key.

Secondly, the Taproot upgrade will be able to compress complex conditions required for transactions into one single line of data under what's called the Merklized Alternative Script Trees (MAST) to the blockchain's code, making it a more streamlined process.

These changes are revolutionary as both transactions and conditions for their execution take up storage on the blockchain. And Bitcoin's transaction fees increase when more space is used up. Lower fees would incentivize far more transactions on the network, as well as merchant adoption. But that's just the first perk.

The second perk is that users will have much more privacy when it comes to using bitcoins. Indeed, its digital record of transactions (otherwise known as a public ledger) unintentionally made Bitcoin less private than cash. As a result, nosey blockchain analytic firms can monitor users' transactions and uncover their personal information based on their public key. But when transactions are bundled together with just one unique key, it's much harder to deduce who sent the BTC. This will make BTC compete better with coins designed to obfuscate wallet addresses and shield observers from tracing transactions.

The final perk is that smart contracts would become more affordable on Bitcoin's network. The technology behind Bitcoin is pretty old, and until Taproot goes live, it can only handle about four transactions per second. Each basic transaction (sending money from A to B) costs about $5 to $75, and with smart contracts, users would need to pay astronomically more in fees as they take up more space on the blockchain.

This will lead to an increase in demand for btc and will skyrocket its price. People are bullish about btc at $100k by eoy but it might not be that impossible to get close to that number after the upgrade.

Tl-dr:

With the introduction of the Taproot upgrade, transaction fees will be lower, though still require improvement via future upgrades, smart contracts and NFTs will be possible on the btc network and it will have a higher privacy in certain cases. It's not a bad idea to get some btc now while it's cheap

P. S. Copy-pasted some stuff from the internet and added some words of mine. Not 100% original content