Elizabeth Weise

USA TODAY

Editor's note: The pricing in this story is from Feb. 23. Bitcoin prices have since risen to $1,293.35 on Coindesk.

SAN FRANCISCO — What's backed by no government, created by a mysterious, unknown inventor and reached an all-time high Thursday? If you said the cryptocurrency bitcoin, you're clearly in the know.

Bitcoin, launched in 2009, is decentralized digital currency that is traded from person-to-person, rather than through banks, and has no issuing or regulating country.

On Thursday it hit an all-time high of $1,163.59 according to CoinDesk.com, which tracks bitcoin prices. The previous high was $1,129.86, touched on January 4.

A couple of factors seem to be pushing the digital currency upwards.

The confirmation of Mike Mulvaney as director of the federal Office of Management and Budget last week helped, as Mulvaney is a long-time supporter of bitcoin. He helped found the Congressional Blockchain Caucus. Blockchain is the technology that digital currencies such as bitcoin are based on.

There's also anticipation that the Securities and Exchange Commission will allow the first of three exchange-traded funds to launch. The deadline for approval for the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust ETF is March 11. If it goes through, the fund will create an easy way for investors to get a taste of bitcoins, without having to go through the trouble of buying them on the open market.

Last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz suggested the United States should just phase out paper money all together and move towards a digital economy using digital currencies to help end corruption and tax evasion.

"Countries like the United States could and should move to a digital currency,” he said, “so that you would have the ability to trace this kind of corruption. There are important issues of privacy, cyber-security, but it would certainly have big advantages.”

The digital currency hit $1,163.00 in November of 2013.