Strategy, the poster child of “DAT treasuries” and the largest corporate bitcoin holder, has broken its silence. Last week, the company sold 32 BTC at an average price of $77,135, raking in roughly $2.5 million. It marks the first time since late 2022 that the self-styled “diamond hands” entity has sold bitcoin, effectively ending a chapter of its hoarding myth.
The market responded swiftly. BTC dipped below $71,000 overnight, hovering around $70,560. Crypto-linked U.S. equities faced a broad sell-off: Bullish lost 7.99%, DeFi Development 7.97%, Circle 7.11%, while Strategy itself shed 5.85% and Upexi 5.04%. With crypto liquidity already tight, this seemingly small sale acted as a brutal accelerant.
Not a First: The 2022 Flash Sale
This is not Strategy's inaugural bitcoin sale. At the height of the FTX-induced crypto winter in December 2022, with BTC sliding below $20,000, Strategy sold 704 BTC at $16,776 on December 22. Just two days later, it swiftly bought back 810 BTC at $16,845—a classic “sell high, buy low” maneuver.
Forced Hand: STRC Dividends and Financial Strain
The immediate trigger for this sale is STRC, Strategy’s flagship fixed-income digital credit product. The preferred shares require an annual dividend payout of approximately $1.7 billion. After buying back $1.5 billion in convertible debt last month, the company’s cash reserves fell to roughly $871 million—enough to cover only about six months of dividend obligations. STRC itself briefly dipped to $97.11 on May 29 before recovering to $98.57.
Strategy had already flagged this risk in its Q1 earnings report. The company stated that if convertible notes mature or are redeemed without conversion into common stock, it may need to sell ordinary shares or bitcoin to generate sufficient cash. The quarterly filing revealed a net loss of $12.54 billion, almost entirely from an unrealized BTC loss of $14.46 billion. At quarter-end, its 818,334 BTC carried a total cost basis of $61.81 billion, averaging about $75,537 per coin.
Confidence Blow and a Polymarket Rigmarole
Despite Michael Saylor’s earlier claim that “even selling one bitcoin will be followed by buying ten to twenty times more,” this sale has cast a shadow over the DAT treasury model. To true believers, it signals that the model has hit a dead end, sapping the will to accumulate and hold.
Strategy still holds 843,706 BTC, worth $60.94 billion at an average cost of $75,699, translating to an unrealized loss of $2.93 billion. Just last month, amid a broader market rebound, the position was sitting on an $8.2 billion unrealized gain. On May 28, Saylor even published a “HODL” (Hold On for Dear Life) article urging steadfastness during the downturn.
Meanwhile, prediction market Polymarket served up a farce over the sale. The contract asking whether Strategy would sell BTC before May 31 had traded around 40% probability; on June 1, it surged from 12% to 80% before settling at 58%, with over $16.4 million in volume. Because no official statement confirmed a May sale, the market resolved as “No.” The episode once again demonstrated that prediction markets bet on rules, not on ground truth.
Skeptics Pile On, and a Policy Prayer
Gold bug and crypto critic Peter Schiff declared the sale a signal that Strategy has flipped from the “largest bitcoin buyer” to a seller, questioning where future demand would come from. Billionaire investor Mark Cuban revealed he has offloaded most of his BTC holdings, disappointed by bitcoin’s failure as an inflation and geopolitical hedge. JPMorgan noted that the “debasement trade” in gold and bitcoin is heating up, with investors stepping away from safe havens.
With prices sliding further, the crypto market can only cling to the hope that the Trump administration will “love crypto once more.”