speaking of the BCH roadmap, it lists the inclusion of schnorr signatures as a step towards
scaling (via batched signature validation).
this is euphemistic at best. to see that, recall that schnorr sigs have been championed by Core devs since long before BCH existed, and not precisely because of their putative contribution to scaling. the declared interest, rather, has been to introduce anonymity tools into the protocol.
that interest is not without justification. a prevalent worry has been that the fact that bitcoin transactions are fully analyzable poses the threat of loss of fungibility. perhaps the coins you bought legally were tainted from previous illicit transactions, and could be confiscated. this led to the rise of monero and the drive to include anonymization tools in bitcoin.
but the worry has been exaggerated. money obtained legally and without demonstrable knowledge of fraudulent origin is fungible. this is a fundamental monetary principle that applies to fiat, just as much as it does to bitcoin. this principle has been upheld in practice: to my knowledge there have been no cases of confiscation of bitcoin legally obtained and transacted, anywhere. there have been no threats to do so either.
the
frequently drawn conclusion that fungibility requires anonymity is fallacious. within the constraints of the law, fiat is fungible without being anonymous (except for cash, which represents a minuscule part of the money supply), and so is bitcoin.
on the other hand we have a credible warning that adding anonymity schemes to the protocol introduces the risk of the coin to be outlawed in some jurisdictions. how would you like it if no exchange legally available to US customers was permitted to list the BCHUSD pair? are the software engineers that pushed for it certain that the addition of anonymization tools to the protocol does not introduce such catastrophic risk?
