A New Playbook for Bitcoin Treasury
Strategy Inc., the company that owns more Bitcoin than almost anyone else, said it may sell up to $1.25 billion of its digital coins. That is a big change. For years, it only bought Bitcoin, never sold. Now it wants to raise cash to meet its obligations and support its stock price.
The firm also announced two separate buyback programs, each worth $1 billion. One is for common shares, the other for preferred shares.
Strategy just raised that dividend rate to 12%, up from before.
Why the Company Had to Act
The stock has fallen almost 80% over the past year. That wiped out a key advantage: Strategy used to sell new shares at a premium to its Bitcoin holdings.
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That premium has now shrunk. A crucial metric, mNAV, which compares the company's total enterprise value (including debt and preferred equity) to its Bitcoin stash, fell below one, indicating that the market now values Strategy at less than its crypto holdings.
That is a problem. "If the market starts treating MSTR as a slow-moving ETF with preferred obligations attached, that multiple doesn't recover, so they needed to do something," said Adam Morgan McCarthy, the head of research at LO:TECH. The company now promises to keep enough cash on hand to pay preferred dividends and interest for 12 months. After selling common stock last week, it has $2.55 billion in cash.
The preferred shares issued in 2025 now trade below $80, well under their $100 par value, reflecting investor worry about the sustainability of the 12% dividend rate. This pressure forced Strategy to prioritize liquidity over its long-standing buy-and-hold approach.
A Signaling Move, Not a Fire Sale
So far, Strategy has only sold 32 Bitcoin since 2022 - a tiny amount. Its total Bitcoin holdings are worth about $51 billion. The $1.25 billion limit is a ceiling, not a target.
The company may never sell that much. But the announcement sends a message.
"The framework is ultimately a signal that Strategy is managing Bitcoin as a treasury asset with real liquidity discipline, not just an ideological position," Lacie Zhang, a research analyst at Bitget Wallet, stated. "Whether that's good or bad depends on where Bitcoin goes next, which has always been the only question that matters here."
After the news, common shares jumped as much as 6.5% before giving back some gains. Bitcoin itself was trading below $60,000 on Monday.
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