Strategy Offloads 1,690 BTC for $108.6M Buyback as USD Reserve Reaches $4.65B

Strategy’s latest treasury move wasn’t about timing Bitcoin—it was about tightening the capital stack.

In the week to August 9, Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin treasury vehicle sold 1,690 BTC for $108.6 million, or an average $64,262 per coin net of fees. That trimmed holdings to 840,447 BTC from 842,138 a week earlier. The firm’s aggregate Bitcoin cost basis stands at $63.36 billion, or $75,385 per BTC—about $11,123 above this week’s sale price—underscoring that this was a balance-sheet maneuver, not a trade.

Every dollar of BTC proceeds went into the capital structure. Strategy repurchased 1,152,020 STRC preferred shares for $108.6 million, its third transaction under the $1 billion Digital Credit Securities Repurchase Program launched June 29. Authorization left: $785.2 million. The week prior, the company split BTC sale proceeds between preferred dividends and an $81 million buyback.

The larger lever pulled was equity. Strategy sold 6,585,682 common shares for $653.1 million net—roughly six times the BTC sale—allocating $650 million to its dollar reserve and $3.1 million to cash. As of August 9, the USD reserve is $4.65 billion, up from $4.0 billion. Management also noted the reserve’s duration increased by 143 days to 2.7 years, and STRC’s BTC-linked credit tightened by 10 basis points. At around $65,100 on Monday morning (per CoinGecko), the BTC stack is valued near $54.6 billion versus the $63.36 billion paid.

The context matters. After holding a “never sell” posture for years, Strategy broke the seal in late May, disposing of 32 BTC for $2.5 million to fund preferred distributions—its first sale since December 2022. A June capital framework now permits up to $1.25 billion of disposals. Including this week’s $108.6 million, July’s $216 million, and last week’s $104.7 million, the company has used about $429 million of that capacity (excluding the May micro-sale). It hasn’t added to BTC since June, instead raising stock to build cash against $1.76 billion in annual dividend obligations. The BTC balance is 6,916 coins below June’s 847,363 peak—a 0.8% pullback.

Here’s the pivot investors should be watching: “net Bitcoin per share” has become the primary metric. By centering the holdings attributable to common after debt and preferred claims, Strategy is effectively re-framing the narrative from absolute BTC tonnage to claim-adjusted ownership. In practice, that does three things: - It makes equity dilution and preferred buybacks transparent in a single figure. - It aligns treasury actions—BTC trims, STRC repurchases, stock issuance—with a target that common holders can track daily. - It signals a willingness to optimize credit and liquidity even if it means selling BTC below cost on a small slice of the stack.

Some Bitcoin purists might bristle at any sale. But the scale is modest relative to holdings, and the trade-off—extending USD duration to 2.7 years, tightening preferred credit by 10 bps, and lifting cash to $4.65 billion—reduces financing risk around substantial dividend commitments. It’s a pragmatic, rules-based approach: use equity as the primary funding pipe, deploy BTC tactically to support preferred and balance-sheet resilience, and measure success by accretive “net BTC per share” over time.

What to monitor next: pace of common issuance, remaining $785.2 million STRC buyback capacity, any re-accumulation of BTC if spreads and liquidity improve, and how “net BTC per share” trends as the framework runs through market cycles.