The Nasdaq-listed Marathon Patent company announces that it has purchased $ 150 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC) for its cash. Over 100,000 BTC are now held by publicly traded companies.
4813 BTC in cash
The Las Vegas-based, publicly traded Marathon Patent company converted $ 150 million of its cash into bitcoin. The company now holds around 4,813 BTC.
At the start of the year, the company had $ 425 million in cash, so this acquisition represents exactly one-third of its available cash .
Merrick Okamoto, CEO of Marathon, explained:
„We believe that holding some of our cash reserves in bitcoin will be a better long-term strategy than holding dollars, like other forward-thinking companies like MicroStrategy.“
Marathon Patent is not an unknown company in the cryptocurrency sector since it already practices mining.
In addition, the American company recently raised $ 250 million to order 100,000 S19 miners from Bitmain . When fully deployed, the company’s total mining capacity will exceed 10.34 exahash (EH / s), potentially making Marathon the world’s largest BTC miner .
A growing list
Since Microstrategy decided to convert some of its cash into BTC, a large number of companies have followed the voice.
According to the Bitcoin Treasuries website , there are 17 publicly traded companies that hold Bitcoin. These 17 entities have 104,139 BTC in their hands, or around $ 3.56 billion at the current price.
But Marathon Patent isn’t the only publicly traded mining company to hold BTC on its balance sheet. Indeed, the two giants Riot Blockchain and Hut 8 respectively hold 1,175 BTC and 2,851 BTC . However, this war chest was formed by their mining activity and not by a direct acquisition like Marathon Patent.
Marathon acquired these bitcoins through New York-based fund management firm NYDIG . Specialized in the safekeeping of cryptocurrencies, NYDIG manages more than $ 2.3 billion in bitcoins on behalf of its clients.
In December, NYDIG also helped insurance giant MassMutual buy $ 100 million worth of Bitcoin for its cash.