Mining Firm Marathon Joins MicroStrategy as De Facto Bitcoin Investment

American Bitcoin mining giant and publicly-listed company Marathon Patent Group, Inc. (MARA) has revealed a $150 million BTC purchase at an average price of $31,167.8. 

Marathon Patent Group, Inc. used the financial services of NYDIG, a subsidiary of Stone Ridge Capital LLC, to execute the trade and corporate treasury solutions. 

While MicroStrategy added only $10 million BTC on the recent Bitcoin dip, Marathon Patent Group bought $150 million BTC. 

Marathon recently completed its $200 million capital raise via a shelf offering. As a result, the company ended the 2020 fiscal year with $217.6 million in cash and 74,656,549 shares outstanding. 

The American mining giant also purchased 103,060 miners, for which the company owes Bitmain around $163 million spread throughout this year subject to delivery. The firm has thus effectively planned to invest in exclusively Bitcoin throughout the year.

Thus, its $150 million Bitcoin bet is no less significant than MicroStrategy’s levered BTC holdings of over $2 billion.

Merrick Okamoto, Marathon’s chairman and CEO, said:

“We also believe that holding part of our Treasury reserves in Bitcoin will be a better long-term strategy than holding US Dollars, similar to other forward-thinking companies like MicroStrategy.” 

The company is America’s largest mining firm to begin converting its cash balances to BTC, suggesting that buying shares in Marathon is a proxy for buying BTC. 

Marathon’s share price surged over 20x within twelve months, rising from less than a dollar to a peak of $23.2 on Jan. 11, corresponding with Bitcoin’s recent top of $42,000.

MARA is currently changing hands at $19.5 and BTC at $33,831.18.

Disclosure: The author held Bitcoin at the time of press.