Strategy has gone back to buying Bitcoin.
On Aug. 31 Beijing time, the company said it bought 4,603 BTC between Aug. 24 and Aug. 30 for about $369.7 million, paying an average of $80,318 per coin. As of Aug. 30, Strategy held 845,050 BTC acquired for roughly $63.73 billion at an average cost basis of $75,412.
In the same week, Strategy also made two other treasury moves: it added about $30 million to its USD Cash liquidity account and spent about $151.8 million to repurchase 1.557 million shares of STRC. As of Aug. 30, its USD Reserve stood at $5.1 billion and USD Cash totaled $1.61 billion, bringing the combined figure to $6.71 billion.
The report noted that USD Reserve and USD Cash serve different purposes. USD Reserve can only be used to pay dividends on Strategy’s preferred stock and interest on outstanding debt. USD Cash can be used more broadly for treasury operations, including buying Bitcoin, expanding USD Reserve, broader capital management, and similar purposes.
Why the recent BTC round-trip looked awkward on price alone
On price alone, Strategy’s trading over the past two-plus months looked uncomfortable. According to Lookonchain data cited in the report, the company sold a total of 6,916 BTC over the period at an average price of about $62,081, then returned to the market with a new average purchase price of $80,318.
Viewed that way, it looked like a classic case of selling low and buying back higher.
But the article’s main point is that the transactions were not centered on a call about Bitcoin’s direction, nor were they meant to mark a top. The company’s priority was to address what had become a more difficult issue than BTC price itself: the STRC dislocation and the cash reserve problem exposed by that stress.
After selling part of its BTC holdings, rebuilding dollar reserves, adjusting the STRC mechanism, and launching large-scale repurchases, Strategy has now resumed BTC buying. In the article’s framing, the biggest risk hanging over the company in the past two months has at least been dealt with in stages.
How STRC turned into a funding and liquidity problem
For investors who have followed Michael Saylor and Strategy for years, the events of this summer were unusual.
For several years, Strategy’s operating narrative in capital markets had been straightforward: raise money, then buy BTC. Whether through common stock, convertible debt, or later through preferred stock products such as STRK, STRF, STRD, and STRC, the company’s capital operations largely pointed to the same destination: raise funds from the market and keep expanding its Bitcoin holdings.
Inside that model, the key variable was not how much cash the software business could generate on its own. It was whether capital markets were still willing to keep supplying fuel to that financing machine.
The first visible crack appeared in June with STRC. The report describes STRC as Strategy’s most important floating-rate preferred stock product, one designed in part to trade as close as possible to $100. To support that objective, Strategy sought to maintain the product’s appeal through tools such as dividend adjustments, so STRC could keep functioning as a relatively stable financing vehicle. Once STRC began drifting away from that level and the move worsened, the structure came under pressure.
For Strategy, the central problem was clear: if the market price stayed below the issuance price for a long period, the company’s ability to keep raising money through STRC would be materially weakened. That hit the core of its capital model.
Strategy was able to expand its BTC position over the past several years because it kept raising funds. When financing channels such as common stock and preferred stock worked smoothly, new money could keep coming in and be directed into BTC. When one important channel stopped functioning well, while preferred dividends and debt interest still had to be paid in cash, liquidity pressure could surface quickly.
The June 29 framework opened the door to selling BTC
To deal with that, Strategy introduced what the report called a "Digital Credit Capital Framework" on June 29. One of the most important shifts in that plan was that it formally opened the door to selling BTC for the first time.
Under the arrangement described in the article, if management concluded that selling BTC was more advantageous than issuing common stock or using other capital markets financing tools, the company could sell part of its Bitcoin holdings to fund preferred dividends, debt interest payments, or replenish USD Reserve.
That changed the role of a treasury that had long been treated as one-way accumulation. BTC itself could now be used as a source of liquidity when financing conditions in capital markets tightened.
Strategy then moved into large-scale BTC sales. Before that, the article said, the company had already run a small test sale, but the size was limited to just 32 BTC.
The three-part playbook over the past two months
Looking back from June 29, when the Digital Credit Capital Framework was announced, the company’s operating pattern has been fairly clear. It sold part of its BTC to raise liquidity, kept adding to cash reserves through MSTR ATM sales, and repurchased STRC on a large scale in an effort to repair the dislocation. That process continued until reserve pressure began to ease.
On BTC sales, Strategy sold 3,588 BTC in the week of July 6 at an average price of about $58,603 for total proceeds of about $210 million. In the week of Aug. 3, it sold 1,638 BTC at about $61,660 on average for around $101 million. In the week of Aug. 10, it sold 1,690 BTC at about $64,260 on average for about $108.6 million. Across those three weeks, the company sold 6,916 BTC for roughly $430 million.
BTC sales, though, were only one part of the response. The main funding source over the past two-plus months remained MSTR ATM sales. By continuing to sell common stock, Strategy lifted USD Reserve from $2.55 billion on June 29 to $5.1 billion. It also created a USD Cash account in late August, which had reached $1.61 billion as of Aug. 30. Combined, those two pools of dollar assets totaled $6.71 billion, up about $4.16 billion from the end of June, an increase of more than 160%.
At the same time, the company kept buying back STRC. In the latest week alone, Strategy spent $151.8 million to repurchase 1.557 million shares. Since the buyback program began in late July, it has used about $635 million in total to repurchase STRC.
STRC near $97 has cooled one of the market’s biggest concerns
With BTC sales, reserve-building, and STRC buybacks all underway, the adjustment has started to show some results.
Beyond the improvement in cash reserves, the clearest repair signal has been STRC itself. According to the article, as of the U.S. stock market close on the morning of Sept. 1 Beijing time, STRC had recovered to around $97, leaving it about 3% below the $100 target area. Strategy management had previously said on its second-quarter earnings call that it aimed to push STRC back close to $100 before Sept. 8. Based on the current level, that target looks far more achievable than it did earlier.
The risk is not gone, but it has eased for now
The article also stops short of saying Strategy is fully out of danger.
It said there is still uncertainty around whether STRC can return to par by Sept. 8 and remain close to $100 over time. Strategy’s large preferred stock structure also means continuing cash obligations, and whether its raise-money-buy-BTC machine can return to normal depends in part on whether the market keeps supplying capital.
Even so, compared with the situation a little over two months ago, Strategy has regained some room to maneuver. Cash reserves are much larger, the STRC dislocation has narrowed noticeably, and the company has moved from continuous BTC selling back to buying.
The report’s conclusion is that what looked on the surface like a poor sell-low buy-higher trade actually bought Strategy something else: more than $4 billion in additional dollar assets, hundreds of millions of dollars in STRC repurchases, and time to adjust a capital structure that had come under pressure when STRC dislocated and cash reserve concerns grew.
That overhang has not fully disappeared. But it looks less dangerous than it did before.
