Saylor's "Never Sell" Gospel Gets a Quarterly Patch Update 📜

Strategy sold 1,638 Bitcoin for $104.7 million between July 27 and August 2, according to a Monday 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, lowering its corporate treasury to 842,138 BTC acquired at an aggregate cost of $63.51 billion and an average price of $75,419. The coins left the balance sheet at an average of $63,957, with $52.4 million of the proceeds routed to dividend payments on the company's STRC preferred stock and $52.3 million used to repurchase STRC shares. The transaction is the firm's first reported Bitcoin disposal since it sold 3,588 BTC for about $216 million on July 6, and follows a 32 BTC sale in early June that marked Strategy's first Bitcoin sale since a 2022 tax-loss transaction.

Alongside the BTC sale, Strategy sold 3,011,361 MSTR common shares for $290.6 million, directing $250 million into its USD Reserve, $28.9 million toward additional STRC buybacks, and $11.7 million to its cash balance. The week's combined activity funded $81.2 million of STRC repurchases, equal to 912,143 shares and the second buyback under a $1 billion program announced June 29, leaving $893.8 million of authorization outstanding. Strategy founder and chairman Michael Saylor said in a Monday X post that the moves extended the company's "USD duration" by 57 days to 2.3 years and tightened STRC's Bitcoin credit spread by five basis points. The company said it would hold STRC's annual dividend rate at 12%, declaring semi-monthly payments of $0.50 per share, and would not recommend a reduction until the shares trade consistently near their stated $100 par value.

The capital framework allowing Bitcoin sales, disclosed in a June 29 8-K filing, permits up to $1.25 billion of disposals, of which Strategy has now used $321 million following the July and August transactions, excluding the earlier 32 BTC sale. Strategy has not added Bitcoin to its holdings since June, when its last reported purchase was 520 BTC on June 22, and its stack now sits 5,225 BTC below the 847,363 peak reached in June, a 0.6% reduction.

In comments after the filing, Saylor distinguished his personal Bitcoin position from the publicly traded company's capital management, saying, "When I say never sell your Bitcoin, I'm speaking from one saver to another. I have never sold my Bitcoin. Not a single satoshi. Strategy is a publicly traded company, it's not my wallet." He added that Strategy has publicly stated since 2020 that it can buy or sell Bitcoin to manage its capital and that the company's fundamental belief in Bitcoin has not changed.

STRC traded at $89.4 in Monday's pre-market session, 10.6% below its $100 intended par value, while MSTR was down 1.9%, according to Yahoo Finance data. Bitcoin traded at around $62,500, down roughly 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 earlier.