Strategy Sells $395 Million of Bitcoin and Stock to Defend Its Preferred Shares

Strategy, the largest corporate holder of bitcoin, sold 1,638 coins for $104.7 million between July 27 and August 2, at an average price near $63,957. CryptoSlate reports that the combined sale of bitcoin and its own common stock raised about $395 million. Of that, $81 million funded a repurchase of its STRC preferred shares, and the remainder went toward a cash reserve targeted at $4 billion. The company's 2026 disposals now total 5,258 bitcoin. It began accumulating the asset in 2020. An aggregator feed put the resulting holdings at 842,138 bitcoin.

The sale followed five weeks in which Strategy bought nothing, a break from the pattern that defined the company. Chief executive Phong Le told investors the firm will get through the bear market, presenting the disposals as balance-sheet management rather than a change of conviction.

The mechanics deserve plain description. Strategy funded years of accumulation by issuing convertible debt and preferred stock, instruments that carry fixed cash obligations. Bitcoin pays no yield, so those obligations have to be met from new issuance, operating cash or sales of the asset itself. The shares no longer trade at the premium that made issuance cheap, and the preferred instruments trade below par on doubts about dividend coverage. So the company is now selling the asset in order to buy back the claims against it. That is the funding model running in reverse.

Buying back preferred stock below par is accretive on its own terms and reduces the dividend burden. It also confirms what critics of the model argued. The accumulation was never purely one-directional, because the financing structure sitting above the coins has its own price and its own holders.