Strategy Sells 32 BTC to Pay Dividends, Breaking 'Never Sell' Promise

Original author: ChandlerZ, Foresight News

On June 1, Strategy filed an 8-K with the SEC, disclosing the sale of 32 bitcoins between May 26 and 31 at an average price of $77,135, totaling approximately $2.5 million. After the sale, the company holds 843,706 BTC with a total cost basis of $63.87 billion, at an average price of $75,699.

32 coins represent just 0.004% of the total holding; $2.5 million equals Strategy’s average buying volume over roughly one and a half days in the past 12 months. Financially, this transaction is negligible. But what it breaks is far greater than the amount it realizes: since first purchasing Bitcoin in August 2020, Strategy has sold only once—in December 2022, when it sold 704 BTC for $11.8 million at an average price of $16,776, solely to create a tax loss (tax-loss harvesting), then repurchased 810 BTC two days later at a lower price. That sale was essentially a tax maneuver, not a genuine reduction in position.

But this time, $2.5 million was explicitly designated for preferred dividend payments, and Strategy had no intention of repurchasing it.

Starting in early 2025, Strategy began issuing preferred shares with annual dividends of 8% for STRK, 10% for STRF, 10% for STRD, and 11.5% for STRC. Combined, these four series have resulted in cumulative dividend payments exceeding $693 million to date.

The logic behind these preferred shares is that investors provide capital to Strategy, which uses the funds to purchase Bitcoin, then pays fixed-rate dividends using its cash reserves and operating income. If Bitcoin’s price rises and the mNAV premium widens, Strategy can continue issuing new shares to raise capital and sustain the cycle. If Bitcoin’s price falls or stagnates, the obligation to pay dividends remains, but the window for raising new capital narrows.

MicroStrategy's Bitcoin acquisition pace

In December 2025, Strategy established a $2.25 billion cash reserve specifically to cover dividends and debt repayments, which was sufficient to last approximately 30 months at the then-current rate. However, by May 31, 2026, this reserve had declined to $900 million, with $1.35 billion consumed over six months.

During the earnings call, Strategy CEO Phong Le publicly listed the "disciplined sale of bitcoin" as one of the capital management tools for the first time. Few people noticed this statement at the time, but looking back now, it was a preview of this 32-BTC sale.

On February 2, 2025, Saylor posted a tweet saying “Never sell your bitcoin,” which was widely shared after the 8-K disclosure. In his subsequent post, he only discussed STRC’s product positioning, stating that Strategy’s goal is to make STRC the world’s best credit instrument, completely avoiding any mention of selling bitcoin.

MSTR's stock price fell approximately 6% today; Mizuho maintained its buy rating but lowered its price target from $320 to $265. Most analysts believe the $2.5 million sale has no material financial impact, but the core significance of this event lies in the signal it sends—it has opened the door, and if cash reserves continue to decline while dividend obligations remain unchanged, future sales may not stop at 32 BTC.

The strategy's sell timing also triggered a prediction market on Polymarket.

The issue with this market is whether Strategy will sell Bitcoin before May 31. The cumulative trading volume has exceeded $111 million. The 8-K filing indicates that the transactions occurred between May 26 and 31, and the document itself records the cutoff time as "4:00 p.m. Eastern Time on May 31, 2026." However, the 8-K was filed with the SEC on June 1, meaning the public only learned about it after the deadline had passed.

Those who bought Yes argue that the transaction occurred before the deadline, as the 8-K form explicitly states May 31 as the deadline; those who bought No argue that no public information confirmed the sale occurred before the deadline, and according to the rules, the outcome should be No. After two No proposals were challenged, the dispute escalated to UMA token holder voting arbitration.

Polymarket later added a note to the page stating, “Consensus from MSTR, on-chain data, or reliable reports has not confirmed that Strategy sold Bitcoin within the market-specified time frame. Confirmations obtained outside the market-specified time frame do not qualify.”

Behind this controversy lie deeper issues with Polymarket’s arbitration mechanism. A May investigation by The Wall Street Journal found that in the majority of Polymarket’s disputed markets, more than half of UMA voting power is concentrated in the 10 largest wallets, approximately 60% of active voters can be linked to Polymarket accounts, and about one in every five disputes involves voters who also hold positions in the contracts under adjudication. Since the beginning of 2026, Polymarket has generated over 1,150 disputed markets—exceeding the total for all of 2025.

Strategy’s 8-K disclosure叠加了一个本就偏弱的市场环境，比特币在 6 月 1 日跌破 72,000 美元，触及 4 月 13 日以来最低水平。CoinShares 数据显示，上周数字资产投资产品净流出 16.7 亿美元，是 2026 年第二大单周流出。5 月整月比特币现货 ETF 净流出 23 亿美元，是今年最大的月度净流出。数字资产管理规模已降至约 1410 亿美元，为年初以来的低点。

Strategy sold 32 BTC, but it was not the first Bitcoin treasury company to act. Q1 data shows that selling has become a collective trend. Between March 4 and 25, MARA Holdings sold 15,133 BTC, generating approximately $1.1 billion in proceeds, mostly used to repurchase convertible notes maturing in 2030 and 2031. During the same period, Riot Platforms sold 3,778 BTC, raising $289.5 million, reducing its holdings from 19,223 to 15,680 BTC—a 18% decline. David Bailey’s Nakamoto Holdings sold 284 BTC in March, representing about 5% of its holdings. Empery Digital sold 370 BTC in April to repay loans. Genius Group liquidated its remaining 84 BTC to settle $8.5 million in debt.

Only MARA, Riot, and Nakamoto collectively sold over 19,000 BTC in Q1. On-chain data from CryptoQuant shows that Bitcoin’s apparent demand dropped to -63,000 at the end of March. This negative apparent demand—a metric measuring total demand relative to new supply—indicates a significant market contraction, with overall selling pressure clearly outweighing buying demand.

Some companies have gone beyond simply selling their crypto holdings—they’ve abandoned their treasury models entirely. Forum Markets (formerly ETHZilla) liquidated approximately $114 million worth of ETH earlier this year and shifted to a tokenization business. VivoPower, which originally planned to build an XRP treasury, transitioned in February to focus on data centers and AI infrastructure, disposing of its entire XRP holdings in the process.

On May 28, French semiconductor company Sequans Communications confirmed that it had fully repaid its convertible bonds by selling its held Bitcoin and plans to gradually liquidate its remaining 658 Bitcoin. The company's Bitcoin holdings peaked at 3,234 BTC.

Sequans previously announced that it intended to hold more than 3,000 bitcoins as a long-term reserve asset. Yet what was termed “long-term” lasted less than a year. The company’s stock (ticker: SQNS) has declined 77% this year and a staggering 97% over the past five years.

Bitcoin treasury companies’ business models were validated during the bull market in the second half of 2025, as rising coin prices elevated the mNAV premium. Companies took advantage of this premium to issue new shares or convertible bonds to raise capital for purchasing more Bitcoin, which further pushed up both the coin price and the premium, creating a positive feedback loop. After the market peaked in October last year, this flywheel reversed. Falling coin prices compressed the premium, narrowing the fundraising window, while dividend payments and debt obligations remained unchanged despite the price decline—forcing companies to sell Bitcoin as the most direct source of liquidity. According to Bitwise, as of the end of Q1, publicly traded treasury companies collectively held approximately 1.15 million BTC, representing 5.47% of total supply. This scale itself poses a risk: if multiple treasury companies are forced to sell simultaneously within the same time window, they could transition from being Bitcoin’s largest buyers into its most concentrated selling pressure.

Companies still actively buying are now rare: Strive purchased approximately 1,944 BTC in May, spending around $1.5 billion; Metaplanet bought 5,075 BTC in early April. Strategy itself also continued buying in May, accumulating over 25,000 BTC for a value exceeding $2 billion that month.

Spending 2 billion to buy while distributing only 2.5 million in dividends indicates that Strategy is far from facing a liquidity crisis. However, the significance of 32 ETH lies in the fact that even the largest holders are beginning to acknowledge selling as a viable option in their toolkit.