Bitcoin Magazine

Strategy (MSTR) Raises $467 Million in Cash, Leaves Stash of 843,775 Bitcoin Untouched

Strategy (MSTR) sold about $466.7 million worth of its stock last week and put the proceeds toward cash rather than bitcoin, according to an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. The move lifted the company’s U.S. dollar reserve to $3 billion and marked another week without a purchase from the largest corporate holder of bitcoin.

Between July 6 and July 12, the Michael Saylor–led firm sold 4,818,781 Class A common shares through its at-the-market equity program. It issued no preferred stock under its other ATM facilities during the period. 

The company said the fresh cash pushed its dollar reserve up by some $450 million, and that it holds the reserve to cover dividend payments on its preferred stock and interest payments on its outstanding debt.

Strategy neither bought nor sold bitcoin over the week. Its holdings stand at 843,775 BTC, a position the company acquired for an aggregate price of about $63.69 billion including fees and expenses, at an average of $75,476 per coin. 

At current prices near $63,000, that stack is worth about $53 billion, which leaves the firm with roughly $10.7 billion in paper losses. The holdings equal around 4% of bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap.

Markets read the filing without much enthusiasm. MSTR fell close to 3% in premarket trading on Monday, extending a slide that has erased 38% of the stock’s value since the start of the year. Bitcoin dropped through the weekend to trade around $62,500, a decline that pulled the so-called bitcoin proxy lower with it.

A shift in Saylor’s posture

For most of Strategy’s history, the pattern ran one direction: raise capital, buy bitcoin, repeat. This year has broken that rhythm. The company has leaned on a wider capital structure, and its recent disclosures show cash building rather than coins.

The clearest break came on July 5, when Strategy sold 3,588 BTC for $216 million — the largest bitcoin sale in its history. The disposal followed a Sunday post from Saylor on X, part of a weekly ritual that market watchers treat as a signal. 

In the past, captions such as “A good time to add more dots” and “Looks better with more dots” landed ahead of purchase announcements. The tone has turned harder to read. A June 28 message reading “We’re gonna need more charts” preceded a new capital framework instead of a buy, and Sunday’s post, captioned “Orange dots tell only part of the story,” arrived before a filing that showed no purchase at all.

The building block behind the change is STRC, a preferred instrument that expanded the company’s capital structure and created new obligations to service. That structure is what makes the cash reserve matter. Dividend and interest commitments now form a fixed cost that 

Strategy must meet whether bitcoin rises or falls, and the dollar reserve exists to keep those payments funded.

How much runway does Strategy have?

For now, the near-term picture looks manageable. A $3 billion reserve gives Strategy a cushion against its dividend and interest commitments, and Monday’s filing shows the company can raise cash without touching its bitcoin. 

Selling stock dilutes shareholders but leaves the treasury whole; selling coins does the opposite. This week, Strategy chose the first path.

The open question is what happens if the choice starts to narrow. As long as the equity market absorbs new share sales at prices the company finds workable, the ATM program can fund its obligations. A sustained slide in MSTR, or a longer bitcoin downturn, would tighten that math and could turn optional sales into forced ones.

The firm’s paper losses give the shift its weight. Strategy sits on about $10.7 billion in unrealized losses, and its stock has surrendered 38% this year. Against that backdrop, the pivot from buyer to cash-builder reads less as a retreat than as a company managing a capital structure that now carries fixed costs of its own.

Bitcoin traded flat near $62,500 in the hours after the disclosure.

This post Strategy (MSTR) Raises $467 Million in Cash, Leaves Stash of 843,775 Bitcoin Untouched first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Schwab Strategist Backs Strategy’s STRC Playbook Amid Bitcoin Weakness

Strategy remains under pressure as Bitcoin hovers near $60,000, but recent capital moves have bought the company time, according to Jim Ferraioli, director of crypto research and strategy at the Schwab Center for Financial Research.

Speaking on Morning Trade Live at the New York Stock Exchange, Ferraioli said the firm led by Michael Saylor faces scrutiny while the price of Bitcoin sits 50% below its peak. Strategy, the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, has funded much of its buying through preferred equity, including its variable-rate Stretch preferred stock, known as STRC.

That product fell near $70 from its $100 par value before a rebound. To defend the peg, Strategy raised the STRC dividend to 12% and authorized $2 billion in buybacks while unlocking further Bitcoin sales. The stock has since started climbing back toward par. 

“The market is supportive of these actions,” Ferraioli said, describing the response as a check on fears of cascading liquidations.

The shift marks a change in tone for a company known for a “never sell” stance. 

“We went from never sell Bitcoin to strategically sell Bitcoin,” Ferraioli said, acknowledging fair criticism. He cautioned that a lower multiple could limit Strategy’s capacity to issue shares and buy more Bitcoin in the second half of the year. 

Schwab’s perspective on Bitcoin’s slump

Ferraioli weighed in on a market bump that followed comments from President Trump, who signaled openness to holding Bitcoin in the new Trump Accounts savings program. 

Ferraioli read the move as a sign of one more potential class of buyer, alongside mainstream investors who entered through spot ETFs. 

“The crypto market loves narratives,” he said, calling the asset momentum-driven.

On correlations, Ferraioli described Bitcoin as a low-correlation asset, a trait he traced to the four-year halving that cuts new supply. Past ties to tech stocks have broken down, and a historic inverse relationship with the dollar has wavered; Bitcoin has rallied during periods of dollar strength this year. 

“Starting points matter,” he said, noting that Bitcoin rose during the Iran conflict as the dollar gained.

He addressed the dollar-yen rate, which trades near 40-year lows. A stronger yen could unwind the carry trade, in which investors sell the yen to buy growth assets. Ferraioli framed a yen rebound as a possible headwind for risk assets, though not a primary near-term risk for Bitcoin.

On the debasement trade, Ferraioli pushed back on the idea that last year’s gold rally, set against a halving of Bitcoin’s market cap, disproved the store-of-value case. 

He attributed the gold move to supply constraints and momentum rather than fiscal fear. The federal budget deficit has narrowed from 8-9% of GDP to 5%, near the median across Bitcoin’s life.

“It’s not an endorsement of the fiscal health,” he said, “but it helps put that narrative in check.”

This post Schwab Strategist Backs Strategy’s STRC Playbook Amid Bitcoin Weakness first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Preferred Stock Is Becoming Bitcoin Treasury Firms’ Financing Tool of Choice: Report

A new class of Wall Street securities has grown from an experiment into a multibillion-dollar market in under two years, and a June 2026 research report from BitcoinTreasuries.net argues the expansion has just begun.

The report, produced in partnership with the DeFi protocol Apyx, tracks the rise of preferred shares issued by public companies and backed by their bitcoin holdings. Such shares now carry a combined market value of about $13 billion. That figure represents close to 1% of the $1.3 trillion global preferred market, a share the report’s authors expect to reach 3 to 5% by 2030 and as much as 10%, or $130 billion, beyond that horizon.

The instrument sits at the center of a financing puzzle facing companies that hold bitcoin as a treasury asset. Firms such as Strategy, led by Michael Saylor, want long-duration capital to buy more bitcoin without diluting common shareholders or taking on debt that must be repaid at a fixed date. Bitcoin’s price swings make that balance difficult. 

Bitcoin traded near $124,720 in October 2025, then fell to below $60,000s by mid-June 2026, a drawdown of about 47% in eight months.

Preferred shares offer a path around the problem. When a company issues them, its common share count does not rise, so existing owners avoid dilution. The shares are classified as equity rather than debt, which means no maturity date and no forced repayment. In exchange, holders receive a dividend that ranks ahead of common stock.

 For income investors shut out of bitcoin’s upside, the structure converts the token’s volatility into a yield product.

Preferred shares are pushing Bitcoin expansion

Those yields dwarf what fixed-income markets pay. The five main bitcoin-backed preferred securities in the U.S. carry effective yields between 10.8% and 15.2%, against the 3 to 4%offered on high-yield savings accounts. 

Strategy’s lineup accounts for most of the market: STRF, STRC, STRK and STRD together hold a market value near $12.5 billion. Strive, an asset manager turned bitcoin treasury company, issued a fifth security, SATA, with a market value around $330 million.

The report’s central claim is that demand outstrips supply. Fixed-income institutions such as mutual funds, banks, pensions and insurers hold $10.9 trillion in U.S. treasuries. A shift of 10 to 20 basis points from that pool would generate $10.9 billion to $21.8 billion in demand, enough to validate the near-term market projection on its own. 

Supply, though, is capped by the amount of bitcoin available as collateral. Of the 20 million bitcoins in circulation, holdings in exchanges, spot ETFs and mining firms are excluded as customer assets or operating reserves. 

That leaves the 1.26 million bitcoins held in corporate treasuries, worth about $83 billion. Strategy alone controls some 845,000 of them, or 67%.

Collateral coverage is the feature the report leans on to make the case for safety. Bitcoin-backed preferreds maintain coverage ratios of 3.8 to 4.5 times, meaning issuers hold $3.80 to $4.50 in bitcoin for every $1 of preferred equity.

 By comparison, the median large-bank mortgage in the third quarter of 2025 advanced 76 cents against every dollar of home value. “The security of these instruments is significantly higher than 95% of the bonds in the market,” Jeff Walton, chief risk officer at Strive, said in the report, “because they’re actually backed by capital, not future cash flows.”

Not every firm qualifies to issue. Walton set out requirements: a clean balance sheet free of senior secured debt, scale to support an issuance of $100 million or more, and a team versed in tax treatment, covenant design and dividend policy. 

Encumbered bitcoin, he said, ranks ahead of preferred equity and would block most deals. Strive itself used a $225 million SATA offering in January to retire debt inherited from its acquisition of Semler Scientific, a move that left all of its bitcoin unencumbered.

The risks are structural rather than hidden. Strategy’s common stock, MSTR, acts as a volatility amplifier, and it has fallen more than bitcoin over the past year. “When bitcoin’s price declines, Strategy’s will dip more,” said Tony Lau, an investment partner at Primitive Ventures, who described a possible cascade in the stock. 

Three of the four Strategy preferreds trade at discounts to their $100 par value. The dividends themselves depend on a company’s ability to keep raising capital against a rising bitcoin price, though both Strategy and Strive have disclosed cash reserves sufficient to cover at least twelve months of payments.

Strategy CEO Phong Le told investors in February that the firm’s balance sheet holds unless bitcoin falls to $8,000 and stays there for five or six years.

For now, the report frames preferred equity as an instrument in its “0 to 1 moment” — a market where appetite exceeds what issuers can produce, and where the gap favors the companies willing to build the product.

This post Preferred Stock Is Becoming Bitcoin Treasury Firms’ Financing Tool of Choice: Report first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.