Listed Marathon buys 4,813 Bitcoin worth $150 million

"We're talking about Bitcoin over the next three, five, 10 years slowly inching away at gold's market capitalization", Vijay Ayyar, head of Asia Pacific with crypto exchange Luno in Singapore, said in an online question and answer session with Bloomberg Tuesday.

The bitcoin price has moved between the range of $30,000 - $33,000 over the last week before breaking out today, which led to another series of mainstream headlines doubting bitcoin's future for the third time this month.

After US-based business intelligence company MicroStrategy (MSTR) revealed its relatively small United States dollars 10m bitcoin (BTC) deal last Friday, Marathon Patent Group (MARA), another Nasdaq-listed entity, said it purchased BTC 4,812.66 for an aggregate purchase price of USD 150m.

According to the announcement, Marathon added about 4,812.66 BTC to its reserve, which cost an aggregate price of $150 million.

Marathon Patent Group is not new to Bitcoin as the company has been mining the top cryptocurrency since 2017 with over 2560 miners under its ownership. The development helped Marathon to allocate their cash holding to Bitcoin, probably, to hedge against inflation.

Following the Bitcoin purchase, "we have accelerated the process of building Marathon into what we believe to be the de facto investment choice for individuals and institutions who are seeking exposure to this new asset class", the CEO Merrick Okamoto, said.

The CEO said the company has "contracted to purchase 103,060 miners, all of which are now expected to be delivered and fully deployed by the end of the first quarter of fiscal 2022".

"When fully deployed and installed, the company's total hashrate capability will exceed 10.34 exahash [from the current about 256 petahash], which we believe could make Marathon the largest bitcoin miner in the world".