On 14 November 2021, at 05:15 UTC, Bitcoin mined block 709,632 and Taproot activated: BIP 340 Schnorr signatures, BIP 341 Taproot/MAST, BIP 342 Tapscript. Miners had already locked the upgrade in during Speedy Trial in June. Node operators had months to install Bitcoin Core 21.1. This morning is the height the deployment named, not a surprise fork and not a new asset.
Wednesday’s print near $69,000 is a different page. Do not mash a candle into a soft fork. Later uses of witness space (inscriptions, in 2023) are a grandchild argument. They are not this day’s lede.
What happened
A Taproot spend can hide unused script branches: what hits the chain can look like a simple key spend even when the contract was more interesting. Schnorr also makes some multi-party signatures smaller and more uniform. Old nodes still see valid blocks; that is what a soft fork is. If a site asked you to “upgrade your BTC” or to send coins to a migration contract, it was a scam with a BIP number.
Why it matters
Privacy and script capability are real, and they are optional. Wallets have to implement the new output types. Most people will not notice a thing until a product they use actually spends this way. See how crypto wallets actually work. See how to read a crypto headline without getting played when “Bitcoin just upgraded” is sold as a new era.
What happens next
Wallet support, a long tail of unused capability, and people citing this block in arguments that have not happened yet. We will not forecast the print. Nothing here is an instruction to buy, sell, or move bitcoin.
