Bitcoin fell below $71,000 on Monday morning following a disclosed sale of 32 bitcoin (for roughly $2.5 million) by Michael Saylor’s bitcoin treasury company, Strategy. Saylor has stated on numerous occasions that Strategy would never sell its bitcoin. But executives at the company seemed more open to the possibility in recent weeks. Strategy still holds 843,706 bitcoin on its balance sheet, making it the world’s largest corporate bitcoin holder.
The sale by Strategy occurred last week and was first disclosed in an SEC filing on Monday. Strategy directed the roughly $2.5 million in proceeds toward distributions on its STRC perpetual preferred stock, a vehicle that delivers variable yields to investors whose capital the firm uses to accumulate more bitcoin. According to Arkham Intelligence, on-chain activity had already hinted at a potential sale, with over 400 bitcoin shifted to Coinbase Prime on Friday.
While many have assumed this is the first time Strategy has ever sold bitcoin, it actually sold some earlier on in its journey as a digital asset treasury company (DAT) in December 2022. That sale was for tax loss harvesting, which is a practice that involves realizing losses on assets to offset taxable gains elsewhere in a portfolio. Strategy purchased more bitcoin than it sold just a few days after that 2022 sale, according to blockchain analyst Ai Yi, as reported by The Block.
Saylor and his team telegraphed a possible bitcoin sale before last week’s move. In the Q1 2026 earnings call, Saylor said, “Yeah, we’ll probably sell some bitcoin.” He described the step as a way “to fund a dividend just to inoculate the market” and show that the company could handle liabilities without solely relying on stock sales. He stressed that Strategy would stay a net aggregator of bitcoin. In related comments, Saylor noted the firm could buy 10 to 20 bitcoin for every one sold. He compared the operation to real estate development, where a company buys land cheaply, sells a portion at a higher value to cover expenses, and then purchases even more land. Executives had indicated that modest sales to service the preferred shares remained consistent with long-term growth as long as overall holdings increased.
Reactions to the sale throughout the Bitcoin and greater crypto industry have been varied. “This isn’t the end of Strategy, and it’s not the end of Saylor (it probably is the end of DATs),” Onramp CEO and founder Michael Tanguma posted on X following the sale. “But the premise quietly changed. For years the deal was that the Bitcoin never gets touched.”
Notably, the sale amounts to less than 0.004% of Strategy’s overall holdings, and the company alone has purchased more bitcoin than the total amount that has been mined on the Bitcoin network so far this year.
Last week $MSTR sold 32 Bitcoin for about $2.5 million at an average price of $77,135. Since Bitcoin's biggest buyer has now become a seller, where will the new demand come from to sustain the pyramid? Bitcoin is already below $72K, which is about 7% below where @Saylor sold.
— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) June 1, 2026
In general, opinions from crypto market observers on Strategy vary from financial stroke of genius to outright Ponzi scheme. The company now raises capital primarily through preferred stock instruments like STRC, which carry annual costs in the range of 11% in effective yield structures. It deploys those funds to buy bitcoin and aims for the asset to appreciate enough to service payouts while expanding the treasury. Critics have pointed out that it can appear Ponzi-like because fresh capital helps sustain obligations. To function effectively, the model relies on bitcoin developing as a trusted reserve asset around the world.
Strategy and other bitcoin treasury companies have been sitting on massive unrealized losses in recent months, as bitcoin has struggled since hitting a new all-time high of around $125,000 in October. As the largest player in the game, Strategy has booked roughly $30 billion in losses in the last two quarters. Its average acquisition cost sits near $75,700 per bitcoin, leaving the holdings underwater at current price levels.
Elsewhere, Sequans has abandoned its bitcoin treasury strategy completely after booking tens of millions of dollars worth of losses on its holdings in less than a year. Additionally, bitcoin miner Bitdeer sold the entirety of its bitcoin holdings in February amid a pivot into AI infrastructure and has yet to replace them. In fact, it continued to report sales of the entirety of the bitcoin it has mined on a weekly basis.
