Saylor's Strategy Sells the Top First, Buys the Dip Later — 3,588 BTC Out the Door 🪙

Strategy, the Michael Saylor-led software-turned-Bitcoin-treasury firm, sold 3,588 BTC for approximately $216 million over the past week to fund dividends on its Digital Credit securities, according to a Monday Form 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The transactions reduced the company's holdings to 843,775 BTC, carried at an average cost of $75,476 per coin for a total cost basis of $63.7 billion. As of July 5, Strategy also reported $2.55 billion in its USD Reserve, unchanged from the prior week.

The breakdown of the sale includes 1,363 BTC sold at an average price of $59,256 between June 29 and June 30, and 2,225 BTC sold at an average price of $60,773 between July 1 and July 5. Strategy disclosed the sale of 32 BTC in early June as its first reported Bitcoin sale since a 2022 tax-loss transaction. The latest move comes one week after Strategy unveiled its Digital Credit Capital Framework on June 29, which authorizes limited Bitcoin sales to fund preferred stock dividends, interest expenses, USD Reserve building, and repurchases of preferred securities and Class A common stock. The framework also authorized $2 billion in stock buybacks and raised the annual dividend rate on the Stretch (STRC) perpetual preferred to 12%. A separate BTC Monetization Program disclosed the same day allows Strategy to raise up to $1.25 billion through Bitcoin sales.

With BTC trading near $60,000, well below Strategy's $75,476 average cost, the company booked an unrealized loss of $8.32 billion on its digital assets for the second quarter, alongside a realized loss of about $0.9 million. Bitcoin fell from roughly $74,000 in late May — when Strategy sold the 32 BTC — to below $58,000 last week before bouncing to about $64,000 over the July 4 weekend. A crypto trader, KALO, noted on X that after a sequence of buys and sales, the company's net Bitcoin change was an increase of only 69 coins despite deploying roughly $20 million in additional capital, with an implied average cost on those incremental holdings exceeding $289,000 per bitcoin.

STRC traded at $88.70 during Monday's pre-market session, 11.3% below its $100 intended par value, per Yahoo Finance data. Bernstein said in a note that Strategy was unlikely to face forced Bitcoin sales, citing 17 months of cash to cover dividend obligations and interest payments, debt liabilities equal to 13% of its Bitcoin collateral value, and its next principal payment of about $1 billion due in the third quarter of 2028. Bernstein maintained its $150,000 year-end Bitcoin price target.

On Sunday, Executive Chairman Michael Saylor referred to Bitcoin as "Digital Energy" in a post on X, and on Monday predicted that changes in Bitcoin's codebase will be less impactful on the asset's evolution than deepening capital markets and an expansion of digital credit. Circle (CRCL) shares fell nearly 16% on the day to $63.99, per Yahoo Finance, extending a 39% decline over the past month.