Bitcoin traded near its all-time high price late on Thursday after the intense debate over the cryptocurrency's future appears to be heading to a positive end, according to CNBC.

The price of bitcoin hit a high of USD 2,948.51 on Thursday evening, just shy of the record high USD 3,025.47 reached on June 11, according to data from CoinDesk.

While the price pulled back over the next couple of hours, it is significantly higher than the $2,294.40 handle it began trading at on Thursday morning. Bitcoin has taken a hit in recent days because of the uncertainty over its future.

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".

To understand this, it's important to outline how transactions work. Transactions by users are gathered into "blocks" which is turned into a complex math solution. So-called miners, using high-powered computers work these solutions out to determine if the transaction is possible. Once other miners also check the puzzle is correct, the transactions are approved and the miners are rewarded in bitcoin.

The whole debate has been about the right way to increase the block size, therefore speeding up transactions.