Saylor spent four years telling everyone that Strategy would never sell Bitcoin. On June 29, his company released a document titled "Digital Credit Capital Framework," whose core allows Strategy to sell up to $1.25 billion in Bitcoin. After the announcement, MSTR rose nearly 7% in pre-market trading.
A company that prides itself on the belief of "never selling" has announced a coin-selling plan—and the market treats it as good news. This is worth examining.
From 32 coins to $1.25 billion
At the end of May this year, according to CoinDesk, Strategy quietly sold 32 bitcoins, equivalent to approximately $2.5 million. It was the first sale since 2022, with the clear purpose of paying preferred dividends. At the time, MSTR’s stock price dropped as investors felt MicroStrategy’s promise of “never selling” had been broken.
One month later, the framework document increased the selling quota by 500 times.
At the current price, this amount is approximately equal to 20,000 bitcoins, representing 2.5% of Strategy's total holdings.
But the change in scale is merely superficial; the real transformation lies in its nature. According to Strategy’s filed Form 8-K, the May sale was characterized as “ad-hoc,” meaning temporary and sporadic. The new framework, however, establishes an institutionalized pipeline with four clearly defined purposes: bolstering U.S. dollar reserves, paying dividends and interest on preferred shares, repurchasing the company’s own preferred shares, and repurchasing MSTR common shares.
Selling crypto is no longer a temporary fix but has become part of the company’s operational toolkit. In the announcement, Strategy CEO Phong Le used direct language, stating the company is transitioning “from one-way capital issuance to active capital management.” It took only a month to move from exception to policy. The question is: what is truly driving this shift?
The lower the price, the higher the interest rate.
The answer lies in STRC, the largest preferred share stake in Strategy.
STRC is a perpetual preferred stock issued in July 2025 with a par value of $100. According to a BusinessWire announcement, the issuance size is approximately $8.5 billion, making it the largest single preferred stock offering globally to date. STRC features a unique mechanism whereby the coupon rate is not fixed but reset monthly. In theory, increasing the rate can attract buyers and stabilize the price.
In practice, it has been adjusted continuously. According to dividend records from strcincome.com, the interest rate for STRC rose from 9% to 12% within a year, with eight adjustments made—averaging every six weeks—each one meaning Strategy had to pay slightly more on this world’s largest preferred stock.
However, the interest rate hike failed to stabilize the price, and instead, it continued to decline. According to data from stockanalysis.com, STRC dropped from its face value to $74.57, deviating by more than 25%.
Related reading: "STRC Falls Below $80—Can Investors Still Buy the Dip?"
The scissors spread in the chart began accelerating from early 2026. Each interest rate hike means Strategy must pay more per share, and each price drop signals the market’s doubt about its ability to pay. Rate hikes were meant to act as a stabilizer, but instead became an accelerator.
How much does these scissors cost? The principal size of STRC is $8.5 billion, with a current interest rate of 12%.
Just this one item generates over $1 billion in annual dividends.
Strategy also has three preferred shares—STRK, STRF, and STRD—and approximately $6.7 billion in convertible debt. According to the company’s announcement, the annualized fixed obligations across the entire capital structure amount to $1.76 billion.
What does 1.76 billion mean? It’s roughly equivalent to burning through $4.8 million per day.
According to the same announcement, Strategy’s USD reserves amount to $2.55 billion, which, at the current burn rate, would last approximately one and a half years. Including the Bitcoin liquidation capacity from the framework, the coverage period can be extended to more than two years.
This is precisely why the framework exists. Rather than selling Bitcoin on the market, it provides a lifeline to an increasingly expensive capital structure.
What if the price drops further?
How long the framework can last depends on the price of Bitcoin. It’s a simple but harsh mathematical equation.
At the current price, fulfilling the framework requirement would involve selling approximately 20,000 bitcoins, representing 2.5% of the total holdings. This percentage appears manageable. However, as shown in the chart below, the number of bitcoins that need to be sold rises rapidly as the price declines. If bitcoin falls by 40%, the same amount would require nearly twice as many coins to be sold.
More noteworthy are the scenarios outside the framework. According to VanEck’s analysis, if all annualized obligations needed to be covered by selling coins, under the most extreme price assumptions, the Strategy would need to sell nearly 50,000 coins per year, accounting for 5.8% of its holdings.
This contains a self-reinforcing cycle. A decline in Bitcoin’s price lowers MSTR’s net asset value multiple. According to Trefis analysis, MSTR’s current mNAV is approximately 0.64x, meaning the market values only 64 cents for every $1 of Bitcoin held by Strategy.
A mNAV below 1 means that issuing shares at the market price (ATM) is equivalent to selling your own Bitcoin at a discount. According to analyses from multiple institutions, this channel, which was once Strategy’s primary funding source, has effectively been frozen.
Options are limited. If dollar reserves continue to dwindle and STRC’s depegging worsens, interest rates will be forced higher. Higher rates increase annual obligations, compelling Strategy to sell more Bitcoin, which adds further selling pressure and drives the Bitcoin price down further. Selling Bitcoin alone may not break this cycle—it could even accelerate it.
However, an annual consumption rate of 5.8% represents the most extreme assumption. According to the announcement, Strategy’s reserves combined with the framework allocation amount to $3.8 billion, sufficient to cover obligations for more than two years. Large-scale token sales are not required in the short term.
The logic behind the market's 7% rise may lie here. Before the framework was announced, investors priced in a worse scenario in which Strategy might be forced into disorderly Bitcoin sales or even unable to pay preferred dividends. The framework replaces panic with an institutionalized solution. According to Bohan Jiang, Senior Derivatives Trader at FalconX, the framework is "positive for both common and preferred shareholders."
However, the alleviation of liquidity concerns does not equate to resolving structural issues. The annualized obligation of $1.76 billion will not decrease simply because a framework exists, and STRC’s interest rate remains at 12%. If the price of Bitcoin does not recover, the lifespan of this oxygen tube can be calculated.