MIAMI, FLORIDA – APRIL 7: Michael Saylor, Chairman & CEO, MicroStrategy, speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 Conference at Miami Beach Convention Center on April 7, 2022 in Miami, Florida. The worlds largest bitcoin conference runs from April 6-9, expecting over 30,000 people in attendance and over 7 million live stream viewers worldwide.(Photo by Marco Bello/Getty Images)
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“When I say ‘Never Sell Your Bitcoin,’ I speak as one saver to another. I have never sold mine,” Michael Saylor wrote on X on August 3. “Not one satoshi. Strategy is a public company, not my wallet.”
The public company sold 1,638 bitcoin that week.
Strategy disclosed the sale in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission the same day Saylor posted. The coins left between July 27 and August 2 at an average price of $63,957, raising $104.73 million. The filing says where the money went. Of it, $52.4 million funded dividends on Strategy’s preferred stock, and $52.3 million bought back one particular series of that preferred stock, ticker STRC.
Strategy still holds 842,138 bitcoin. It paid $63.51 billion for them, an average of $75,419 a coin. The bitcoin it sold went out about 15% under what the company paid.
‘Almost Three Times The Interest Of A T Bill’
STRC is the Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock, and it is the largest thing in Saylor’s preferred stock machine. It launched in July 2025 paying 9% a year. The rate was 11.50% at the end of June. On June 29 Strategy raised it to 12.00%.
About 104.6 million STRC shares were outstanding on July 24, with a notional value of $10.46 billion. At 12%, the annual bill is roughly $1.26 billion, paid in cash twice a month.
“He’s got the payment structured so that he knows he can pay the dividends,” Michael Terpin, founder of Transform Group, said on the On The Margin podcast in April, when bitcoin was higher and Strategy had sold none. He described STRC as offering “almost three times the interest of a T bill.”
Strategy declared $507.7 million of preferred dividends in the second quarter across all five series. Its software business, the part that sells products to customers, booked $122.4 million of revenue in the same three months.
‘The Buying Phase Is Over’
Strategy’s board approved a formal policy in June governing when it sells coins, called the Digital Credit Capital Framework. It includes a BTC Monetization Program and a revised STRC dividend rate policy. That policy contains the line that matters most: “management does not intend to recommend to our board of directors a change from the current 12.00% per annum dividend rate for STRC Stock until STRC Stock demonstrates sustained trading at or near its $100 stated amount.”
STRC closed at $89.46 on July 31.
Cutting the rate carries its own cost. Strategy’s quarterly report warns that repeated reductions “may cause the regular dividend rate on STRC Stock to be viewed as reasonably expected to decline,” and flags the tax rules covering what the filing calls “fast-pay stock.” Moving the rate 50 basis points the other way costs about $52.4 million a year, a figure the company discloses itself.
“The problem now with MSTR is that Saylor will be motivated to sell BTC on the way up and eliminate his STRC prefs,” wrote Fred Krueger, an investor who posts as @dotkrueger, on July 28. “So we have a 20 Billion dollar drag to look forward to. The buying phase is over.”
“After spending six years and $60 billion to build a position he said he’ll never sell, Saylor is -20% under water and selling,” wrote Zack Voell, a crypto markets commentator, the same day. “That’s cinema.”
Buying The Discount
Strategy’s own reading is that it is buying a dollar for 89 cents. In the same week it sold the bitcoin, it repurchased 912,143 STRC shares for $81.2 million, about $89 a share against a $100 stated amount. Another $893.8 million remains available under the repurchase program. STRC has since recovered toward $92, a seven week high.
TD Cowen described management as aiming at “restoring STRC to near-par trading levels.”
Strategy also reported a USD Reserve of $4.0 billion as of August 2, held to cover preferred dividends and interest on its debt. It bought 85,296 bitcoin in the second quarter and sold about 1,395. The selling is a rounding error against the stack. Since June 30 the company has sold roughly 3,863 coins, close to 0.5% of what it holds.
What the sales change is the direction. Preferred stock sales netted Strategy $5.46 billion in the second quarter, and the company turned that into 72,408 bitcoin. In July the preferred stock started working the other way, and coins became dividend payments. Bitcoin traded at $64,259 on Tuesday, near the level where Saylor was buying in February and calling a million dollar price inevitable.
Terpin was talking about the treasury companies that launched in 2025, not about Strategy, when he described the discipline most of them lacked.
“They made the mistake of buying at the top. They should know better,” he said. “You should raise your money in a bull market and then hold onto it until you can buy in the bear.”