Strategy Resumes Bitcoin Buys as Saylor Shifts Focus to ‘Never Be a Net Seller’

Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy resumed its BTC purchases this week, as the firm’s chairman Michael Saylor clarified his position after suggesting the company could offload a portion of its holdings to fund dividends.

“I’m very famous for saying ‘never sell your Bitcoin.’ That’s why the internet went crazy when we said we might sell it,” Saylor said in a podcast interview released over the weekend. “But if I was being more precise: never be a net seller of Bitcoin. It just wouldn’t have been so viral.”

Hours after the podcast, Strategy resumed its Bitcoin buys, scooping up 535 BTC for $43 million at an average price of $80,340 per coin, the company announced Monday. The purchase came after the firm paused its BTC buys last week, and brought its total holdings to 818,869 BTC, worth some $61.9 billion.

Saylor’s comments followed Strategy’s earnings call last week, during which the company disclosed it has the flexibility to pause sales of its MSTR common stock and instead cover STRC dividend obligations through Bitcoin sales.

STRC is Strategy’s perpetual preferred stock that pays a quarterly cash dividend and has become one of the most liquid preferred instruments in U.S. markets. STRC’s effective annual yield hovers around 11.5%, according to the company’s official statistics.

Saylor’s argument

Strategy sold $3.2 billion in STRC in April alone, deploying those proceeds into Bitcoin purchases. The quarterly dividend on that issuance runs approximately $80 to $90 million, implying a buy-to-sell ratio of roughly 30-to-1 in any month where the company must raise cash for dividends.

Saylor put the firm’s break-even issuance rate, the point at which it remains a net Bitcoin buyer even while selling BTC to service dividends, at 2.3% of holdings annually. With current issuance running between 15% and 20%, the math consistently favors accumulation, he said. JPMorgan analysts estimate Strategy’s Bitcoin purchases could total $30 billion this year at the current pace.

Strategy CEO Phong Le reinforced the position on Friday, framing the question as “math over ideology” Le argued that, “At the point where selling Bitcoin versus selling equity to pay a dividend is better for our bitcoin-per-share, we will do it.”

Gold advocate Peter Schiff tweeted in response that Saylor had “admitted MSTR would sell Bitcoin if needed,” calling the arrangement necessary to sustain what he called a Ponzi scheme.

“Peter thinks Bitcoin’s a Ponzi scheme,” Saylor said, adding that Schiff “is not really a lover of anything in this space.”

The outlook for Bitcoin

Speaking to Decrypt, experts downplayed the likelihood of a market shock from any potential Strategy sale.

Andrew Webley, founder and CEO of UK Bitcoin treasury firm Smarter Web Company, argued that responsible treasury management could actually strengthen institutional confidence. “It demonstrates that Bitcoin treasury companies are evolving into durable financial structures rather than ideological vehicles,” he told Decrypt.

Comments alone are unlikely to move Bitcoin’s price direction, with macro liquidity, ETF flows, and risk sentiment remaining the primary drivers, Georgii Verbitskii, derivatives trader and founder of TYMIO, told Decrypt.

“If MicroStrategy were to sell some Bitcoin, the initial reaction would probably be negative from a psychological standpoint,” he said. “But unless the scale of selling is very large, I don’t think it would structurally change the market.”

Bitcoin is currently trading at around $81,200, down slightly from last week’s high of $82,496, according to CoinGecko data. Despite the short-term pullback, users on prediction market Myriad, owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, remain optimistic, assigning an 88% chance that the leading crypto’s next major move is a rally to $84,000.