Saylor's "Monetization" Magic Trick: Sell the Bitcoin, Pay the Dividend 🪄

Strategy, the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, sold 3,588 $BTC over the past week for around $216 million to fund dividends on its Digital Credit securities, according to a Monday disclosure. The proceeds topped up the firm's U.S. dollar reserve, which stood at $2.55 billion as of July 5. The Michael Saylor-led firm trimmed its holdings to 843,775 BTC, carried at a cost basis of $63.7 billion, or about $75,476 per coin.

With Bitcoin trading near $60,000, well below that average, Strategy booked an $8.32 billion loss on its digital assets for the second quarter, almost all of it unrealized. The company said its BTC Monetization Program unveiled June 29, which lets it raise up to $1.25 billion by selling Bitcoin, remained fully available as of July 5. The latest move follows the adoption of a capital management framework last week signaling the same $1.25 billion potential Bitcoin sale for cash to cover dividend payments, alongside authorization of $2 billion in stock buybacks.

At the same time, Strategy hiked the annual dividend on its Stretch (STRC) preferred shares to 12% and said it would have enough resources to cover 26 months of dividend costs if it tapped its Bitcoin stash. On Sunday, Executive Chairman and co-founder Michael Saylor referred to Bitcoin as "Digital Energy" while sharing a chart of the company's latest purchases. The following morning, he predicted on X that changes in Bitcoin's codebase won't be as impactful on the digital asset's evolution as deepening capital markets and an expansion of digital credit.

Separately, the UK government unveiled Monday a fresh crackdown on foreign money in politics, extending a £100,000 cap on overseas donations—already in force since March—to cover a donor's first year of UK residency, a step that could affect crypto billionaires who have bankrolled Nigel Farage's Reform UK.

In stablecoin news, Coinbase, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, and more than 140 other companies announced a new shared digital payment called Open USD (OUSD), designed as infrastructure no single firm controls. Shares of USDC issuer Circle (CRCL) fell nearly 16% on the day to a recent $63.99, per Yahoo Finance, extending the firm's plunge to 39% over the past month.