Strategy continues to sell bitcoins: STRC buyback and a new era of capital management
Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) has again resorted to selling part of its bitcoin reserve. Between August 3 and 9, 1,690 BTC were sold for $108.6 million. All proceeds were directed toward buying back STRC preferred shares, whose price has recently shown weakness.
This is already the second consecutive week the company has acted as a net seller. The week prior, the volume sold amounted to 1,638 BTC. After the latest transaction, Strategy retains 840,447 BTC on its balance sheet—still the largest corporate holding of the leading cryptocurrency in the world.
Deal details: price and mechanism
The average sale price was $64,262 per coin. This is noticeably below the average cost of the company's entire portfolio, estimated at $75,385 per BTC. Thus, each sale at current market values locks in a loss relative to the average acquisition price.
The proceeds went toward buying back 1,152,020 STRC preferred shares. Recall that STRC is a perpetual floating-rate instrument issued to finance bitcoin investments. The current dividend yield is set at 12% annually, which should support the price near its $100 par value. However, the market has yet to embrace this structure: on Friday, the security closed at $95.01, and over the past year it has dipped as low as $71.25.
Balance sheet and reserves: a new strategy
In parallel, Strategy sold 6,585,682 common MSTR shares through its at-the-market (ATM) program, raising $653.1 million. Of that, $650 million was directed into a dollar reserve, which now stands at $4.65 billion. According to Michael Saylor, this is not a departure from the bitcoin strategy but rather a strengthening of the credit profile. The duration of the dollar reserve increased by 143 days—to 2.7 years—while the STRC bitcoin credit tightened by 10 basis points.
These actions fit within the Digital Credit Capital Framework approved in late June. It permits limited BTC sales to fund dividends, share buybacks, and fiat reserve replenishment when issuing new shares becomes less advantageous.
In Monday's premarket, STRC rose to $95.55, recovering about 33% from its lows, but it remains far from par. Bitcoin, meanwhile, is trading around $65,019, roughly 13% below Strategy's average purchase price.
My view: This situation is an important marker of Strategy's transformation from a passive BTC holder into an active capital manager. The company is no longer simply accumulating bitcoin but is using it as collateral for complex financial instruments. The question is whether the market can adapt to a new model where a corporate balance sheet becomes akin to a treasury with active hedging. For now, investors are voting against it, but if the mechanism works, we could see a new wave of interest in such structures. Upcoming reports will show whether the current pace of sales continues or the company returns to accumulation.