In an announcement today, the CEO of Marathon Patent Group, Inc, Merrick Okamoto said: "By leveraging our cash on hand to invest in bitcoin now, we have transformed our potential to be a pure-play investment into a reality". Speaking to The Block he added: "We also believe that holding part of our treasury reserves in bitcoin will be a better long-term strategy than holding US dollars, similar to other forward-thinking companies like MicroStrategy." On Twitter, Michael Saylor, head of the MicroStrategy company, noted the announcement signalled yet another public company turning to bitcoin as an asset.
He said: "Marathon Patent Group, Inc. today announced that it has purchased 4,812.66 bitcoin in an aggregate purchase price of $150 million.
"Another public company adopts bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset."
However, Mr Saylor's confidence in bitcoin has been challenged by billionaire gold investor Peter Schiff.
Mr Schiff also tweeted: "The financial media is complicit in aiding Michael Saylor in his attempt to lead US corporations down a primrose path to financial ruin.
"He wants to entice CEOs into padding their earnings with paper gains in a bitcoin pyramid scheme, thus inflating a bubble within a bubble."
Monday's bullish sentiment towards bitcoin could be encouraged by the near $4billion worth of bitcoin options set to expire this Friday, according to data from cryptocurrency futures trading platform Bybt.
Another factor that is causing the upward trajectory is billionaire investor Mr Saylor's upcoming bitcoin corporate summit in the first week of February.
MicroStrategy's Michael Saylor will host the virtual "bitcoin corporate strategy" summit.
READ: Bitcoin prices surge to over $10,000 as investors ditch other cryptocurrencies
The immediate suspension included former US treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin's proposed rules on self-hosted crypto wallets.
The regulatory impositions on bitcoin wallets will be suspended until his new administration can review them.
The US Treasury, under former treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin, announced the proposed rules on cryptocurrency wallets in December.
The rules would require registered crypto exchanges to verify the "identity of their customers if a counterparty uses an unhosted or otherwise covered wallet and the transaction is greater than $3,000".
However, speaking to Express.co.uk Max Keiser appeared to dismiss the threat regulation could pose on bitcoin.
He said: " No regulator can touch it.
"They are wasting their time trying.
"Instead they should be preparing people for this new era of perfect, digital, 'peer-to-peer gold' and the bull market that will carry it to millions of dollars per coin."
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