Fidelity Investments Inc. is now a major stakeholder in Marathon Digital Holdings, one of the biggest bitcoin mining firms in North America.
Fidelity Investments Buys More Than 7% of Marathon
At the time of writing, Fidelity has purchased a 7.4 percent stake in the crypto mining enterprise, thereby boosting the institutional presence that has grown so prevalent in the crypto world over the past few months. Since the end of last year, many institutional figures from Square to MicroStrategy to Tesla have all gotten into the bitcoin game, buying anywhere from several hundred million to more than $2 billion worth of the world’s number one digital currency.
While Fidelity is not exactly purchasing crypto assets, it is holding a stake in a company that mines them, and Marathon has grown exponentially over the past year alone. While bitcoin has seen its price jump by roughly 240 percent in the past 12 months, Marathon shares have expanded by more than 660 percent. Thus, Fidelity seems to think that by taking ownership of a bitcoin-based company rather than bitcoin itself, it can somehow rake in more profit.
Either way, Fidelity – at the time of writing – is valued at more than $170 billion between four separate divisions, so the idea that the company is now placing itself knee-deep in the crypto mining space suggests that digital assets are becoming far more mainstream and popular among largescale investors. Other institutional investment firms that own stakes in Marathon include the Vanguard Group – which currently owns about 7.5 percent of the company – and Susquehanna, which owns about three percent.
In an interview, Fred Thiel – the CEO of Marathon Digital – expressed his enthusiasm about developing a new partnership with Fidelity, saying:
We’re super excited about the institutional ownership [especially] if you look at the change from last year to this year and even the last two quarters have just been amazing [in] how much institutional ownership has grown in our stock… I think as an investor looking at mining stocks, you want to look at growth rate, you want to look at return on assets, you know it is a very Cap Ex intensive business… We are excited to see all the applications that are going to be rolled out on bitcoin and the expansion of bitcoin as it permeates itself into the kind of mainstream financial markets.
Always Open to Crypto
Fidelity was one of the first financial institutions to express an open-minded attitude towards bitcoin and its crypto counterparts. Not long ago, several executives were found to be using their offices to mine BTC, and in the year 2018, Fidelity Digital Assets was launched as a means of allowing hedge funds, family offices, and other institutional firms to delve into crypto trading.
Just a few days ago, Marathon Digital Holdings discussed how much it had expanded over just the past year alone.
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