Strategy's Bitcoin ATM Is Spewing Cash, But Standard Chartered Says It's Just Spare Change 🪙

Standard Chartered said Strategy's recent Bitcoin sales to fund preferred-stock dividends amount to "mostly noise rather than a signal" for Bitcoin's medium-term outlook, reiterating its end-2026 forecast of $100,000. Between June 29 and July 5, the Bitcoin treasury company sold 3,588 BTC for approximately $216 million to cover dividend obligations and bolster cash reserves, leaving it with 843,775 BTC on its balance sheet. That sale followed an earlier disposal of just 32 BTC in early June, which triggered what was described as Strategy's worst week since 2022.

In a note published Friday, Standard Chartered's Geoff Kendrick wrote that the market had "muddied" near-term prospects for $BTC by reacting to the divestitures, but argued investors should look past them. The bank said clear communication is "key to reassuring markets that wholesale selling is unlikely," which should pull the company's STRC preferred shares back toward their $100 par value and, in turn, ease pressure on Bitcoin. The shares are designed to trade near par but slid to an intraday low of $71.25 on June 26 after the company disclosed its first Bitcoin sale earlier that month, and price action since suggests "the market has yet to be fully convinced of this pivot," Kendrick wrote.

The shift marks a departure from Strategy's longstanding accumulation model, which relied on issuing stock at a premium to its Bitcoin holdings, measured by the metric mNAV, to purchase additional $BTC and lift both the company's valuation and Bitcoin's price. That premium has largely evaporated. Standard Chartered puts mNAV at around 1 on an enterprise-value basis, while BitcoinTreasuries tracks the stock at roughly 0.7 times the value of its Bitcoin on a diluted basis, a discount of about a third. Strategy's stack of 843,775 BTC, acquired for $63.7 billion, is now worth around $54 billion at current prices, and the firm reported an $8.3 billion loss on its digital assets last quarter, almost all of it unrealized.

To keep the dividends flowing, Strategy has begun repurposing its Bitcoin as collateral for STRC, a perpetual preferred stock known as "Stretch" that pays a 12% annual dividend and has roughly $10 billion outstanding per Standard Chartered's estimates. On June 29, the company unveiled a "BTC Monetization Program" authorizing the sale of up to $1.25 billion in Bitcoin to fund cash reserves, service dividends, or repurchase securities. It followed up Monday with a "Digital Credit Capital Framework" outlining the conditions under which the firm may sell Bitcoin going forward, offering an updated view of how it intends to balance resources as Stretch trades under pressure. Because STRC is "heavily over-collateralised" by the Bitcoin backing it, Kendrick wrote, effective signaling from the company can restore confidence in both the preferred shares and the underlying crypto market.