(Reuters) – Bitcoin rose to a record high above $106,000 in early Asian trading on Monday, buoyed by comments from President-elect Donald Trump that he plans to create a US strategic reserve of bitcoin similar to the Strategic Oil Reserve.
Bitcoin, the world’s largest and most popular cryptocurrency, reached a high of $106,533 and traded at $105,688 in latest trading. The value of the smaller cryptocurrency’s Ethereum rose nearly 3% to 4,014.
“We’re in blue-sky territory here,” IG analyst Tony Sycamore said. “The next number the market will be looking at is $110,000. The pullback that a lot of people were waiting for has not happened, because now we get this news.”
“We’re going to do something great in crypto because we don’t want China or anyone else — not just China but others adopting it — and we want to be the head,” Trump told CNBC late last week.
When asked if he planned to build a cryptocurrency reserve similar to oil reserves, Trump said: “Yes, I think so.”
Other countries are also considering strategic cryptocurrency reserves.
Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month questioned the necessity of maintaining state foreign currency reserves, saying that domestic investment in such reserves was more attractive.
Putin said that the current US administration is undermining the role of the US dollar as a reserve currency in the global economy by using it for political purposes, forcing many countries to resort to alternative assets, including cryptocurrencies.
“For example, Bitcoin, who can ban it? Nobody,” Putin said.
However, there are skeptics, with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell likening bitcoin to gold earlier this month.
“People don’t use it as a means of payment, or as a store of value. It’s very volatile, and it’s not a competitor to the dollar.”
Enhanced encryption
Bitcoin has risen more than 50% since the November 5 election that saw Trump elected alongside several other pro-crypto candidates. The total value of the cryptocurrency market has nearly doubled in the year to date to reach a record high of more than $3.8 trillion, according to data provider CoinGecko.
Trump this month appointed a White House czar for artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies, former PayPal CEO David Sachs, a close friend of Trump adviser and mega-donor Elon Musk.
Trump also said he would nominate pro-crypto Washington lawyer Paul Atkins to head the Securities and Exchange Commission.
On Friday, stock exchange operator Nasdaq said MicroStrategy would be added to the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 index after a rapid rise in shares of bitcoin buyers.
MicroStrategy, an aggressive investor in the world’s largest cryptocurrency assets, has seen its shares rise more than six-fold this year, pushing its market capitalization to nearly $94 billion. It is now the largest holder of the cryptocurrency.
(Additional reporting by Kevin Buckland in Tokyo and Ankur Banerjee in Singapore; Editing by Lisa Shoemaker and Lincoln Feast)