Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy has sold 32 Bitcoin from its holdings for roughly 2.5 million dollars, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, marking a significant moment for a company long associated with an iron-clad refusal to part with a single coin.
The sale was executed at an average price of 77,135 dollars per Bitcoin, bringing Strategy’s total holdings down to 843,706 BTC, a stash currently worth approximately 61 billion dollars at prevailing market prices. The proceeds from the sale will be directed towards funding distributions on preferred stock, the firm confirmed in its filing.
The transaction represents a notable departure from Strategy’s long-held and loudly proclaimed position of never selling its Bitcoin. That stance began to soften last month when the firm’s Chair, Michael Saylor signalled a shift during the company’s first quarter earnings call, saying the firm would probably sell some Bitcoin to fund a dividend, describing it as a way to send the market a clear message that it had been done. Strategy’s President and CEO Phong Le reinforced that position, stating the firm would sell Bitcoin when it was advantageous to do so, whether to acquire US dollars or retire debt, provided it remained beneficial to Bitcoin per share.
Market observers had already flagged the risks of such a reversal. Altura COO Mathew Pinnock warned that the immediate impact would be a shift in perception and a weakening of sentiment around conviction in the asset, with the potential to trigger short-term panic among investors who had come to view Strategy’s hoarding as a signal of unwavering institutional confidence.
Those concerns proved well-founded. Bitcoin’s price dropped to just over 72,000 dollars on the news, sliding 2.4 percent on the day according to CoinGecko data.
The sale also comes just a week after Strategy deployed 61 percent of its dedicated cash buffer, approximately 1.38 billion dollars, to repurchase 1.5 billion dollars worth of convertible notes, painting a picture of a firm actively managing its balance sheet in ways that would have seemed unthinkable not long ago.
It is worth noting, however, that this is not entirely uncharted territory for Strategy. Back in December 2022, the firm sold 704 Bitcoin for around 11.8 million dollars before turning around two days later to repurchase 810 BTC, a move framed at the time as a tax loss harvesting exercise rather than a change in philosophy.
Whether this latest sale signals a more permanent shift in strategy, or simply a pragmatic financial manoeuvre, remains to be seen. But for a firm that built its entire identity around accumulating and holding Bitcoin at all costs, the direction of travel is impossible to ignore.
