Bitcoin nears record high price after 'milestone' in fierce debate over its future
The price of bitcoin traded near its all-time high.
A key milestone in the so-called "scaling debate" which has been consuming the bitcoin community was reached.
But some in the bitcoin space said there are more hurdles to jump over yet.
What's been going on?
Within the bitcoin community, a so-called "scaling debate" has been going on. There is a big backlog of transactions on the bitcoin blockchain — the technology that underpins the cryptocurrency. That's because the bitcoin code only allows a certain number of transactions through in one "block".
What next?
The new code update called BIP 91 has been locked in with 93.8 percent of miners showing support for the proposal in the last 24 hours, according to Coin Dance, a site which tracks bitcoin blocks.
It is essentially a software update that miners need to run. So 93.8 percent of miners are signaling their intention to run it.
There will now be a two-day grace period for miners to prepare for the activation of BIP 91. Following that, there will be an adjustment period which could take two weeks. The actual increase of the block size might not take place until November.And there could be some potential issues. For example, one bitcoin developer Bryan Bishop, said that miners might not upgrade their software, even though they are signaling that they will.
