- Marathon Patent Group has announced a $150 million Bitcoin purchase
- The crypto mining company has converted a portion of their treasury into the cryptocurrency
- They have also announced an order of over 100,000 ASIC miners
Marathon Patent Group, a Las Vegas-based digital asset technology company, has announced that it has followed the example set by MicroStrategy and converted some of its treasury into Bitcoin. The NASDAQ-listed company revealed its purchase yesterday, saying that the move is directly influenced by the moves made by other publicly listed players and that Bitcoin represents a better alternative to a depreciating dollar. The company is also taking a huge step into the Bitcoin mining sphere, announcing at the same time that it has contracted to buy over 100,000 ASIC mining machines to be delivered in 2022.
Marathon, Not a Sprint
Marathon released a statement yesterday which revealed the Bitcoin purchase and the reasons behind it. In the statement, the company says it purchased ₿4,812 for $150 million, meaning an average price of $31,172 per bitcoin, and revealed that it believes Bitcoin to be “a better long-term strategy than holding US Dollars, similar to other forward-thinking companies like MicroStrategy.”
Marathon also revealed that they plan to swell their ranks of ASIC Bitcoin mining machines by ordering over 100,000 ASIC miners to add to the more than 2,000 they currently run:
…we have contracted to purchase 103,060 miners, all of which are currently expected to be delivered and fully deployed by the end of the first quarter of fiscal 2022. If all miners were operational today, based on the Bitcoin network’s current difficulty rate, we would produce approximately 55-60 bitcoins per day.
The MicroStrategy Effect Continues
Clearly, the MicroStrategy news is having an impact elsewhere in the sector, although with Marathon being a crypto mining company it is perhaps less surprising that they would convert some of their cash to Bitcoin.
Marathon will be hoping that the Bitcoin effect will help them like it has helped MicroStrategy, who have seen a fivefold increase in their share price since their first Bitcoin purchase was revealed in August. Marathon’s share price, which was trading as high as $155 in 2014, has been floundering at less than under $5 since mid-2018 although it has picked up recently, bouncing back to $18 since November last year.
