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Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: [D-8] Bitcoin is getting 3 major upgrades - Schnorr, Taproot and Tapscript
by
amishmanish
on 12/02/2020, 05:19:15 UTC
I see a few comments saying that Schnorr signatures will result in making public keys indistinguishable from the transactions and the amounts involved will be invisible, making bitcoin more private. This seems to be a myth as this is not the effect neither the intent of Schnorr induced privacy feature, AFAICT.

Correct, those would require hard fork changes to Bitcoin like the implementation of RingCT in Monero and/or CT on the Liquid sidechain.
Thanks. I'll quote this as a +1 to myself and for clarity on differences between Schnorr's effects and confidential transactions.

Taproot will not hide the actual address/ transaction amounts involved.

True, but combined with Schnorr signatures, there are some pretty interesting applications. One could atomically swap from Bitcoin to a different cryptocurrency, but all an observer could see on the blockchain is a simple payment.

That opens up a whole new world for output mixing and amount obfuscation via private payment channels and atomic swaps.
I am yet to get a hang of the atomic swap concept. That is actually quite interesting that swapping bitcoin would be indistinguishable from a simple payment. While reading about sidechains, i came across the fact that a UTXO generated on parent chain is locked to the SPV proof on the child chain. This gets confusing very quickly and will take some more time to understand, at which point, I'd be happy to share my understanding.

I look at crypto from multiple angles.

--snip--
I don’t think these ideas to make Btc more flexible to move around are bad.

I think they will make old money old idea guys nervous.

kind of like oil vs solar.

Absolutely good sir.. Smiley Such increased functionality gives more power to every bitcoin user to defend themselves from arbitrary bank controls and the overarching effect that central banks world over have on jobs, economy and inflation in cohort with Governments and big corporations. Like nullius would say, "Bitcoin is for everyone."

Bitcoin is more than a technology:  Bitcoin is a social phenomenon.  And it is the first mass social movement in history that does not propose any opinion other than its own value.

People who disagree with each other about everything else, can agree about Bitcoin.  That is what gives Bitcoin its value:  Everybody wants Bitcoin, no matter what their opinions about anything else!  And that is what makes Bitcoin immune to financial censorship.  There are people from completely opposite ends of the political spectrum who came to Bitcoin, because big banks disliked them, closed their accounts, and shut them out of the fiat financial system.

It’s scary that banks can impose an unwritten law of their own, with no accountability and no appeal, just by closing people’s accounts.  Bitcoin stops that.