Strategy authorizes massive BTC sale after 52-week lows

Michael Saylor’s Strategy, which owns 847,363 BTC, just authorized up to $1.25 billion in sales of the asset. It’s a dramatic reversal of years of guidance that it wouldn’t sell its BTC.

Branding the about-face as a “BTC Monetization Program” — another entry in Saylor’s dictionary of invented terminology — the company permanently destroyed any impression that it plans to hold onto all of its BTC.

Rather than holding, Strategy now plans to aggressively sell BTC whenever it’s short on cash to pay for stock buybacks and dividends.

The immediate market reaction to the news was moderately positive.

Indeed, MSTR, the company’s common stock, and STRC, the company’s largest preferred stock, both opened for Nasdaq trading today approximately 5% higher on the news.

BTC was little changed on the news, opening within 1% of its Friday price. The company hadn’t actually sold BTC, after all. It merely announced plans to do so.

Saylor’s announcement is obviously intended to boost the company’s deteriorating stock prices after both MSTR and STRC hit 52-week lows last week.

Volatility tests every capital structure. Strategy remains focused on Bitcoin, disciplined capital allocation, credit quality, and long-term value creation. We appreciate our investors and will continue to execute with transparency and resolve. $MSTR

CEO Phong Le tried to explain the company’s betrayal of prior guidance, saying the company is “evolving from one-way capital issuance to active capital management.”

Chief financial officer Andrew Kang offered a tidy slogan: “Bitcoin is capital.” Capital the company has now authorized for liquidation.

Saylor built his reputation on repeated claims that he’ll never sell BTC, even saying people could sell a kidney to HODL.

He now insists the company “remains committed to BTC as its primary treasury reserve asset.”

If Strategy sells all of the BTC authorized under its new BTC Monetization Framework, it would sell 30x more than its largest sale to date: 704 BTC in 2022.

Specifically, Strategy has authorized the sale of roughly 21,000 BTC at current prices. If those sales occur, it’s also cleared up to $1 billion in preferred share repurchases plus up to $1 billion in MSTR buybacks.

Read more: STRC crashes as Strategy’s unrealized BTC losses exceed $13 billion

The announcement also raised the dividend rate of STRC from 11.5% to 12%. Strategy wants STRC to trade near $100 per share and is already paying credit card-like rates to keep it afloat.

Unfortunately, STRC collapsed to $71.25 last week. So, the company lifted its payout rate this morning. Still by lunchtime, shares were struggling at $82 — still 18% below the company’s target.

The company says it now holds a USD reserve (a fancy name for cash) of about $2.55 billion.

That covers roughly 17 months of the $1.7 billion it owes each year in preferred dividend and interest payouts. If it sells all of the BTC it authorized today, that coverage timespan reaches about 26 months.

Holding onto BTC forever isn’t the first commitment on which Strategy has quietly reneged. The company once pledged not to issue MSTR below a 2.5x mNAV (multiple-to-Net Asset Value), except to fund dividends and interest.

It dropped that pledge a few days later. 

This time around, the company promises to “remain disciplined in its use of common equity issuance, particularly when the company’s common stock trades at or near 1x mNAV.”

The mNAV of MSTR, currently 1.04x, is dangerously close to that threshold.

Strategy paid $64.1 billion to acquire its 847,363 BTC at an average of $75,651 per coin. After declining in value by about $14 billion, its holdings are now worth about $50 billion.

Got a tip? Send us an email securely via Protos Leaks. For more informed news and investigations, follow us on X, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The post Strategy authorizes massive BTC sale after 52-week lows appeared first on Protos.