Smart contracts are coming to Bitcoin, and no one is talking about it

Every two years we wonder why bitcoin outperforms every cryptocurrency out there yet we don't keep a tab on what's happening on the development front.

The last upgrade - Segwit - begun the previous bull run and highly optimized btc transactions. It also caused a divide in the community, leading to BCH. Regardless, Upgrades to bitcoin are different from minor consensus changes. And usually they're a big deal.

The upcoming Taproot upgrade - oked by the miners and set to kick off some time in November - will do many things. For one, it will improve the privacy of multisig signatures (getting into XMR territory here). This will make lightning transactions more private, too.

Most importantly, it will enable smart contracts capability. Together with lightning, btc will soon allow smart contracts on the most decentralized, secure network in the world with instant transactions. I understand that many people have reservations about layer 2 solutions taking hold on btc, but ether is going PoS and fully second layer in the future. BTC is much more secure and decentralized than eth is right now, and far far more once PoS kicks in. Also, this isn't just eth territory, but also the territory of all the other coins aiming to copy ether's success.

This is not a shill, because btc doesn't require shilling. When btc goes up parabolic again like it does every two years, at least this time we should know why. It's not because of first-mover advantage, but because of a vast, decentralized community of developers working on this open source protocol and its unique mechanism of creating value and scarcity through PoW. The Taproot upgrade is going to be disruptive for the rest of the market, to say the least.

Mandatory disclaimer: Not financial advice.

Reference: https://decrypt.co/resources/what-is-taproot-proposed-bitcoin-upgrade