Bitcoin was trading above $66,000 today after the activation of its highly expected Taproot upgrade. This upgrade is meant to enhance the privacy and utility of the Bitcoin network. On Monday, Bitcoin gained 1.9% in the past 24 hours to trade around $66,100 in early European trade.
Taproot Upgrade Unanimously Accepted
The crypto’s first major upgrade in four years, Taproot, was activated on November 14. Sofia Blikstad, an analyst at Arcane Research, stated:
Buy Bitcoin Now“Taproot is arguably the most important and anticipated upgrade to the Bitcoin network since the Segregated Witness upgrade in 2017— a controversial upgrade that would divide the community and spawn the Bitcoin Cash hard fork. The fact that Taproot is almost unanimously supported highlights just how significant this coming upgrade is.”
“Taproot is a proposed upgrade of the Bitcoin protocol that promises increased privacy of multi-signature transactions and to unlock the potential for smart contracts to run on the Bitcoin network.”
VanEck’s Spot BTC ETF Rejected
It is most probable that the market had priced in the anticipated Taproot upgrade having seen the price of bitcoin gain around 50% in the past three months. Nonetheless, the gains in the last seven days were muted for the crypto at 0.8%.
Euphoria arising from the recent bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) approvals withered after market watchdog US Securities and Exchange Commission rejected VanEck’s spot Bitcoin ETF application in the past week.
Elsewhere, Ether inched 1.6% higher to trade above $4,700. Solana’s SOL and Cardano’s ADA gained 2.8% to $243.53 and 0.7% to $2.05, respectively. Meme coins Shiba Inu (SHIB) lost 0.9% to trade at $0.00005274, while Dogecoin (DOGE) gained 0.8% to trade at $0.2636.
Crypto.com coin (CRO) was the top gainer spiking over 15% to trade at $0.4765 taking its 7-day gain to more than 28%.