The biggest corporate owner of Bitcoin has quietly turned into a seller. Strategy offloaded 3,588 BTC over the past week, raising roughly $216 million, according to a disclosure released on Monday. Instead of plowing the cash back into more coins, the company used it to pay dividends on its preferred shares and to build up its dollar cushion, which reached $2.55 billion as of July 5.
From relentless buyer to occasional seller
For years, the Michael Saylor-led firm was defined by one approach: buy Bitcoin and never let go. That reputation is now being tested. After the latest sale, its holdings have shrunk to 843,775 BTC. Those coins were acquired at a total cost of $63.7 billion, which works out to about $75,476 apiece. With Bitcoin changing hands near $60,000, far below that break-even point, the company logged an $8.32 billion loss on its digital assets for the second quarter. Almost none of that loss has actually been realized, since the coins still sit on its books.
What the $216 million paid for
The proceeds are earmarked for dividends on what the firm calls its Digital Credit securities. By its own account, Strategy still holds 843,775 BTC in its Bitcoin reserves alongside $2.55 billion in dollar reserves as of July 5. The sale amounted to just 0.42% of the total stockpile, yet it brought in far more money than an earlier disposal of 32 Bitcoin for $2.5 million. That smaller sale had unnerved investors, triggering the company's worst weekly stretch since 2022 and raising doubts about whether the market could still count on Strategy to prop up Bitcoin.
Shares slip while Bitcoin holds firm
The market response was cool. Strategy's stock dropped 2% in pre-market trading to 98.88, according to Yahoo! Finance data. The slide threatened to end a run of five consecutive daily gains and deepened a punishing 26% fall in the share price over the past month. Bitcoin itself told a very different story, climbing 3.7% across the same period. On Monday the cryptocurrency settled around $62,900 before U.S. markets opened, after jumping as high as $63,700 over the weekend, according to CoinGecko.
A fresh plan for managing cash
The disposal fits into a broader capital management framework the company adopted last week. Under that plan, Strategy can sell up to $1.25 billion worth of Bitcoin to raise cash for dividend payments, while also clearing $2 billion in stock buybacks. The BTC Monetization Program, first unveiled on June 29, is the mechanism that permits those sales, and the firm said the full $1.25 billion capacity remained untouched as of July 5. At the same time, it lifted the annual payout on its Stretch (STRC) product to 12% and grew its USD Reserve to $2.55 billion. Strategy estimated it now has enough resources to cover 26 months of dividend costs, provided it is willing to dip into its Bitcoin holdings.
Saylor calls Bitcoin 'Digital Energy'
On Sunday, Executive Chairman and co-founder Michael Saylor described Bitcoin as "Digital Energy" while sharing a chart of the company's recent purchases. The next morning he argued on X that tweaks to Bitcoin's underlying code will matter less to the asset's future than the deepening of capital markets and the growth of digital credit.
