The supply of bitcoin continues to dry up as Marathon Patent Group Inc., one of the largest Bitcoin mining companies based in North America, announced its purchase of 4,812.66 BTC at an aggregate price of $150 million, per a release.
The bitcoin was purchased via New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG), which helped Marathon take advantage of the recent dip in the market. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen NYDIG help companies buy bitcoin, as it facilitated the recent MassMutual purchase of $100 million worth of BTC this past December.
Institutional investors are starting to see the light of a Bitcoin standard and what it can offer them over traditional ways of doing business, as Marathon chairman and CEO Merrick Okamoto said: “We also believe that holding part of our treasury reserves in bitcoin will be a better long-term strategy than holding U.S. dollars, similarly to other forward-thinking companies like MicroStrategy,” according to the release.
Robby Gutmann, the founder and CEO of NYDIG also commented on the purchase in the release, saying: “We deeply admire Marathon’s commitment to the Bitcoin ecosystem.”
This purchase has been noted as a “pure-play investment,” as Marathon strengthens financially and remains one of the only Nasdaq-listed companies to have exposure to bitcoin.