“Never sell your Bitcoin.” Michael Saylor posted those exact words on X (1) in February 2025. It’s about as close to scripture as crypto gets, and the people who follow him built a creed around it, to hold through every crash and treat selling as a sign of weak hands.
On Monday, the company he co-founded gave itself written permission to do exactly that.
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Strategy (NASDAQ: MSTR), the enterprise-software firm turned Bitcoin vault and the biggest corporate holder of the cryptocurrency on earth, authorized a program to sell up to $1.25 billion of its Bitcoin (2) to fund its USD reserve. It’s the first time the firm has formally explained how and when it might sell, and the move clashes with the “never-sell” identity built by Co-founder and Executive Chairman Michael Saylor, that many others have copied (3).
Authorizing a sale isn’t the same as selling it. The program doesn’t obligate Strategy to sell anything, it just gives them the option, and any sale would depend on the market (2). But now that the option exists on paper, the company can actually do it, and that’s a notable change.
What Strategy actually authorized
Strategy folded the $1.25 billion cap into a broader plan called the Digital Credit Capital Framework. As of June 28 the company set aside about $2.55 billion in cash, enough to cover roughly 17.4 months of the dividends and interest it pays (about $1.76 billion a year). The framework also requires keeping at least 12 months of that coverage on hand at all times (2).
If the cash reserve runs low, Strategy can top it up by selling Bitcoin — up to $1.25 billion worth. That cap applies just to refilling the reserve; the program doesn’t set an overall limit and also allows the company to sell coins to cover dividends, interest, or buybacks (3). At current prices, $1.25 billion is about 21,300 BTC, roughly 2.5% of the company’s 847,363 BTC holdings (3). The framework also authorizes up to $1 billion for common-stock buybacks and up to $1 billion for preferred shares.
“Strategy remains committed to Bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset,” Saylor said in the announcement. Chief Financial Officer Andrew Kang added that: “Bitcoin is capital (2).”
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Why the funding model stopped working
For years, Strategy had a setup that only worked one way. Its stock traded well above the value of the Bitcoin it held, so the company could sell new shares at that premium, use the money to buy more Bitcoin, and keep repeating the cycle. It never needed to sell Bitcoin because raising cash was easy.
That whole setup depends on the premium, and that premium has mostly disappeared. Bitcoin hit a record high near $126,000 (4) last October before falling below $60,000 (5) this June, while Strategy’s stock is down about 79% over the past year (6). With that drop, Strategy’s stock no longer commands the hefty premium to its Bitcoin holdings that it once did.
When the stock stops trading at premium, issuing new shares no longer feels like free money, and the bills still come due. Strategy has to keep paying fixed dividends on its preferred stock and interest on its debt, whether Bitcoin is up or down. One of those preferred shares, its Stretch series (NASDAQ: STRC), was pitched by Saylor as something that should stay close to $100, but it closed last Friday around $74 (7). To help support it, Strategy is raising STRC’s dividend to 12%, starting July 1. (2)
In late May, the company sold 32 Bitcoin (its first sale since 2022) to pay a dividend. It was only a tiny slice of its holdings, but even that was enough to upset some of its supporters (8). This new framework is the company’s bigger attempt to deal with the same problem.
The distinction Saylor keeps drawing
Saylor keeps making one point. His “never sell your Bitcoin” line was always advice to individual holders, not as a promise about what the company would do with its treasury.
“I said to you never sell your Bitcoin,” he told a crowd (8) at the Bitcoin Prague conference. “I never said that the company wouldn’t sell its Bitcoin.”
The trouble is, he didn’t always limit that message to individual holders. For years, he said it about Strategy itself (8).
Just three months before the company’s first Bitcoin sale in years, he told CNBC that Strategy would keep buying instead of selling, and would refinance debt before it ever touched its Bitcoin (9).
And back in 2022, when he was asked directly whether the company would sell, he said, “We’re not sellers. We’re only acquiring and holding bitcoin (8).” That answer was about the company’s treasury, not a tip for retail investors.
The distinction is real, but it’s also a little convenient. Sure, Strategy’s filings always kept the option open. But Saylor also spent years saying the company would hold no matter what. That’s a tough line to keep when your brand, your stock, and your followers were all built on the same four words.
What this means for your Bitcoin
If you don’t own Bitcoin or Strategy stock, this is mostly a lesson in how leverage works. A strategy that looks unstoppable on the way up can get shaky fast when conditions turn.
If you own Bitcoin directly, Strategy’s move doesn’t force anything on you (your coins aren’t affected by what one company does with its own). What it can change is sentiment. Strategy is a big, visible holder, so if it ever sells into a weak market, that can add downward pressure on the price.
If you own Strategy stock or its preferred shares, the picture is different. You’re not just betting on Bitcoin. You’re betting on a company that borrowed money and sold shares to buy Bitcoin, and now still has fixed payments to make no matter where the price goes. The premium that helped fuel the gains is gone for now, and management is already planning for a longer slump. You should know that before you treat MSTR as a simple substitute for owning Bitcoin.
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Article Sources
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X (1); Strategy (2); Coindesk (3); Google (4); Cnbc (5), (9); Cryptotimes (6); Fortune (7); Finance Yahoo (8)
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