New York, June 22, 2026, 11:01 ET
- Strategy picked up more bitcoin this time. The bigger step, though, was selling common stock to build back its cash reserve.
- STRC preferreds are still trading under the $100 par, with funding costs still in focus.
- That 520-BTC buy isn’t the key factor here. The real question is if investors will keep funding the high-dividend setup.
Strategy Inc disclosed it picked up 520 bitcoin last week for $34.9 million, paying an average of $67,068 per coin, according to a recent filing. The firm’s stack rose to 847,363 BTC. But the bigger move was higher up in the document—Strategy sold $335.5 million of common stock and didn’t touch its preferred shares. The company still has $17.5 billion of STRC capacity left, the filing said.
Strategy’s bitcoin-buying engine is swinging back to raising common equity at a time when investors are taking a harder look at its preferred-stock fundraising. With an at-the-market, or ATM, program, the company can drip shares into the market as it wants. But last week, less than 11% of common-stock proceeds actually went to buying bitcoin. The rest ended up boosting cash.
The split usually gets ignored. Strategy raised almost 10 times what it spent on bitcoin, which shows the company is focusing on its liabilities as much as its crypto holdings. CoinDesk reported Strategy added about $300 million to cash, now up to $1.4 billion. Both the bitcoin buy and the bigger reserves came from selling common stock.
Strategy says the reserve backs its preferred stock dividends and debt interest. In a June 15 filing, the company said STRC will now have two scheduled dividend payment dates per month instead of one, but the move does not change the dividend rate or total obligations. For July 15, a transitional STRC dividend was set at an 11.5% annual rate.
STRC is under pressure. The preferred stock, which has a $100 par value, dropped to a record low of $82.53 last week, then bounced. James Butterfill at CoinShares told Decrypt a bitcoin rebound “does not automatically increase the cash available.” Mark Palmer, an analyst at Benchmark-StoneX, said Strategy could boost the STRC dividend to “support the price back toward par.” LCX
That’s the market setup investors are tracking. If STRC drops well under par, it gets costly to issue more since buyers want a bigger yield. On-chain analyst Axel Adler Jr. said Strategy’s “financing machine has started to creak,” warning that the Saylor bid — Strategy’s move to backstop bitcoin drops with new securities — could disappear if STRC doesn’t steady. TradingView
Strategy added 2% to trade at $114.81 midmorning in the U.S., with STRC up 1.9% to $90.23. Bitcoin held around $64,914. Other crypto stocks caught a bid, including Coinbase, which gained 2.5%, and Marathon Digital, up 12.8%. But Strategy isn’t just moving with bitcoin now; the stock is moving on its ability to raise capital.
At that bitcoin price, Strategy’s 847,363 BTC come to about $55.0 billion—less than the $64.10 billion the company says it paid altogether. The difference isn’t a liquidity event, but it points to why the reserve is important. Cash pays dividends and earns interest; bitcoin does neither unless sold or used as collateral.
The company broke through a symbolic barrier this month. A June 1 filing showed Strategy sold 32 bitcoin for $2.5 million. Proceeds will go to preferred-stock distributions. The sale is small versus its total holdings but chips away at the earlier story that all new capital went right into more bitcoin.
Risk swings both directions here. If bitcoin climbs above Strategy’s $75,651 average buy price and STRC trades back near $100, the financing setup can reopen. That could make the recent common-stock dilution look more like a protective move than distress. But if bitcoin holds below cost and STRC doesn’t move up, the company could end up relying more on stock sales, raising preferred payouts, or cutting back bitcoin buys to save cash.
Strategy, the company once known as MicroStrategy, says it’s the first and biggest bitcoin treasury company. It also runs an enterprise analytics software business, but right now what matters to the stock is more basic. Investors are zeroing in on the STRC reset, the July dividend schedule, and any new ATM filing as they try to see if the company will use spare cash to buy more bitcoin, or sell equity to shore up the capital structure that makes those buys possible.
