Michael Saylor posted “Back to work. BTC” on X on May 10, 2026, alongside an image of Strategy’s bitcoin holdings tracker, pointing to a return to accumulation after a one-week break. Traders and followers watch these posts closely. Similar messages have often appeared shortly before the company discloses a new bitcoin purchase, usually on Monday morning.
Holdings stay near record levels
The tracker shown in Saylor’s post listed Strategy, formerly Microstrategy, as holding 818,334 BTC valued at about $66.15 billion. The firm’s average purchase price stood near $75,537 per bitcoin, leaving it with an unrealized gain of 7.02% as of May 10. One week earlier, on May 3, Saylor had posted the opposite message, saying there would be no buys that week and that work would resume the next week. That pause was the second interruption in Strategy’s near-weekly buying pattern in 2026.
The timing matched the company’s quiet period ahead of its Q1 2026 earnings release on May 5. Public companies often avoid major capital transactions before earnings calls in order to comply with financial rules and avoid any appearance of selective disclosure. In that context, the buying pause looked like routine procedure rather than a shift in Strategy’s bitcoin policy.
Dividend obligations open the door to small BTC sales
Before the pause, Strategy had been adding bitcoin at a fast pace through April, buying tens of thousands of BTC with funding tied to its preferred stock instrument, STRC. During the earnings call, Saylor said Strategy’s STRC Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock carries an annual dividend yield of about 11.5%. With roughly $8.5 billion of STRC outstanding, the company is dealing with a growing cash obligation to preferred shareholders.
To manage that obligation, Saylor said the firm may sell small amounts of bitcoin. In a recent video interview, he described the approach in simple terms: buy 10 bitcoin, sell one to pay the dividend, buy 10 more, sell another one. He added that even if Strategy sells one bitcoin, it would still be buying 10 to 20 more. His point was clear. Total holdings and bitcoin per share, in his view, would keep rising.
Management frames any sale as a capital decision
CEO Phong Le said on the earnings call that any BTC sale would happen only if it was more beneficial to shareholders than issuing additional equity. He called it “math over ideology.” The comment led to a short pullback in MSTR shares, as some investors took the idea of selling any bitcoin as a break from Strategy’s long-running accumulation-only stance.
Management presented a different case. They argued that using bitcoin as a productive treasury asset to help service obligations would expand its role on the balance sheet rather than signal retreat. After the earnings call, Saylor posted another message on X: “Buy more bitcoin than you can sell.”
Strategy also has a $2.25 billion cash reserve to cover obligations, and the company has proposed moving STRC dividend payments to a semi-monthly schedule to improve liquidity management. At the time of Saylor’s latest post, bitcoin was trading near $80,901, leaving Strategy’s position modestly in profit. With the earnings window closed and financing tools still in place, the market is now waiting for the company’s next purchase disclosure within the coming 24 hours.