Bitcoin has finally reached all of the 217 blocks needed for BIP91 lock in, currently over 95% of all Bitcoin miners are signaling support for BIP91. This means that after additional 336 blocks all the "non-SegWit" blocks mined are going to be ignored by Bitcoin protocol leaving other pools no other choice but to join the rest or walk away from Bitcoin mining business.
But what that means for us - normal users, that wanna pay for our coffee with bitcoin?
- Well first of all the price is probably gonna jump to the all time high areas, since all the uncertainty around the Bitcoin's future is gone - everyone is willing to get some BTC and that drives the price up like crazy (just look at the graph from July 20th to July 21st).
- Second - thanks to SegWit technology implemented normal users do not have to "fight" for the precious space in the block by adding an expensive fee to their transaction anymore, beacuse the part of the block where the signatures of the tranasactions are stored was moved away from the blockchain on a separated network layer and as a result it gives the same 1MB block 70% more space for additional transactions. That means a huge overall boost for the whole network.
- Third - We migh as well witness some more upgrades of the Bitcoins protocol in the future - the rumours about the implementation of Smart Contracts into Bitcoin's network are out in the world now and again - Thanks to SegWit it would be even easier for developers to implement such feature into the Bitocin's code.
It's quite astonishing when you look over the last 5 years of Bitcoin's existence - there were so many unfortunate complications, critical situation and moments, when Bitcoin was proclaimed "dead" it is probably not even possible to count them. But Bitocoin did manage to fight them all and come out of it stronger and better: