Strategy Sells $105M in Bitcoin as Dollar Reserve Hits $4B

Strategy sold 1,638 BTC for $104.7 million in the week to Aug 2, according to an 8-K filed Monday, cutting its Bitcoin stack to 842,138 BTC from the 843,775 it had held since early July. The coins went at an average of $63,957, net of fees.

The sales leave Strategy with an aggregate cost basis of $63.51 billion, or $75,419 per Bitcoin—$11,462 more than it took for this week’s coins.

Strategy said $52.4 million of the sale proceeds funded dividends on its preferred stock and $52.3 million went toward repurchasing STRC shares.

The repurchase came to $81.2 million, or 912,143 STRC shares, with the remaining $28.9 million funded out of common stock sales. It is Strategy’s second buyback under a $1 billion program announced June 29 and first used last week with a $25 million purchase, leaving $893.8 million of authorization outstanding.

The company said the week’s moves extended what it calls its USD duration by 57 days, to 2.3 years, and tightened STRC’s Bitcoin credit spread by five basis points. It will hold the STRC dividend rate at 12% a year, declaring semi-monthly payments of $0.50 a share. Strategy overhauled its investor metrics in July, making “net Bitcoin per share” the centerpiece—the stash left for common shareholders once debt and preferred claims are stripped out. 

Strategy’s capital framework

Strategy broke with its long-held “never sell” stance at the end of May, disposing of 32 BTC for $2.5 million at an average of $77,135 to fund preferred distributions. That was the firm’s first sale of Bitcoin since December 2022, when it sold 704 BTC as a tax-loss harvesting exercise, buying back 810 BTC two days later.

A capital framework unveiled in June set out when the company would sell Bitcoin, and allows for up to $1.25 billion of disposals. Strategy sold $216 million worth of BTC in July, and with this week’s $104.7 million has used $321 million of that capacity, discounting the 32 BTC sale that preceded the establishment of the capital framework.

The firm has not added Bitcoin since June, building its USD reserve against $1.76 billion in annual dividend obligations, largely by selling MSTR shares. It sold 3,011,361 of them last week for $290.6 million net, of which $250 million went into the reserve, taking it to $4 billion.

The Bitcoin treasury firm’s holdings are now 5,225 BTC below the 847,363 peak reached in June, a reduction of 0.6%. Bitcoin traded at around $62,600 on Monday, down 1% on the day, per CoinGecko data. On Myriad, a prediction market owned by Decrypt‘s parent company Dastan, users put just a 6% chance on Strategy holding over 1 million BTC by 2027, down from 12% a week ago.