Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images

It’s been a big night for Bitcoin and the price is still rocketing higher in morning trade.

After dipping below $US2,000 just 3 days ago, the cryptocurrency has surged by around 25% overnight and a short time ago was trading above $US2,800.

A draft version of a new Bitcoin trading platform known as Segregated Witness, or SegWit, is scheduled start today.

If more than 80% of the Bitcoin developer community agree to adopt the new platform, it will officially come into effect on August 1.

Last night’s rapid price increases suggests that the adoption of SegWit will go ahead, thus avoiding an ugly split among Bitcoin miners and developers that would have led to separate versions of Bitcoin trading on two different platforms.

The initial disagreement in the Bitcoin community centered around processing speeds for Bitcoin transactions. Currently, Bitcoin network is only setup to process around 7 transactions per second.

With Bitcoin’s increasing popularity, that’s created more backlogs and delays for market participants. The key feature of the updated SegWit platform is that it will allow for quicker transaction speeds.

Last night’s gains followed a report by Goldman Sachs which said that technical indicators show Bitcoin could rise back above $US3,000.

The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, also rose by around 15% overnight and a short time ago was back over $US200 this morning.

That’s despite reports that hackers stole $32 million worth of Ethereum overnight from the digital wallet of contract-coding company Parity.

Business Insider Emails & Alerts Site highlights each day to your inbox. Email Address Join

Follow Business Insider Australia on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.