Strategy Takes a Bitcoin Breath, Sells $334M of Itself Instead 🧘

Strategy made no Bitcoin purchases or sales last week, ending a string of weekly disposals that had been funding its dividends and buybacks since June, according to an 8-K filed Monday. The company's holdings stand unchanged at 840,447 BTC, acquired at an average price of $75,385. Around $63,500, where Bitcoin traded Monday, that stack is worth roughly $53.4 billion against the $63.36 billion Strategy has spent, a shortfall of about $9.9 billion.

Instead of touching its Bitcoin, Strategy raised $333.7 million net by selling 3,458,866 shares of $MSTR at an average of about $96.48, down from $99.17 the week prior. The filing splits the proceeds three ways: $52.4 million to pay dividends on its STRC preferred stock, $132.2 million to buy that stock back, and $149.1 million into its dollar reserve. The buyback took in 1,388,720 STRC shares and leaves $653 million of the $1 billion Digital Credit Securities Repurchase Program announced on June 29, while a separate $1 billion authorization covering MSTR stock remains untouched.

USD Reserves now total $4.8 billion, up from $4.65 billion a week earlier, and the company said the activity increased USD Duration by 41 days to 2.8 years and tightened STRC's BTC Credit by 4 basis points to 114 bps. Strategy has sold 6,948 BTC for around $432.5 million since May, starting with a 32 BTC disposal in its first sale since 2022 and running through three consecutive weekly sales in July and August. Last week's sale of 1,690 BTC raised $108.6 million, which went directly into buying back the same preferred stock that equity issuance covered this week. Those disposals fall under a capital framework introduced in June that permits up to $1.25 billion of Bitcoin sales to fund dividends, interest, buybacks and the reserve; about $429 million of that capacity has been used, leaving roughly $820 million, and none of it was drawn last week.

Separately, Tudor Investment, the macro hedge fund founded by billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, added to its stake in BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF last quarter, reversing a year-long stretch of selling. The Connecticut firm held 688,529 shares of the iShares Bitcoin Trust, or IBIT, valued at about $22.9 million as of June 30, according to a 13F filing submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Aug. 14, an 18.9% jump from 579,000 shares previously.

In other news, Bitcoin and crypto wallet maker SafePal said Saturday that a flaw in an order-tracking plug-in gave attackers unauthorized access to the personal information of roughly 39,798 customers, the latest breach to put a hardware wallet company's users at risk of being physically targeted, according to a statement posted to X.