Strategy added 334 Bitcoin for $28.7 million last week, lifting its total holdings to exactly 848,000 BTC, according to a Monday SEC filing. The same week, the company spent $176.3 million repurchasing its own STRC preferred stock — roughly six times the size of the Bitcoin purchase.
The buy was Strategy's third consecutive weekly Bitcoin purchase, but only about one-fifth the size of the 1,665 BTC it bought the week before.
The buyback vs. the buy
Strategy repurchased about 1.77 million shares of Stretch (STRC), a preferred stock that pays a 12% annual dividend. The company drew $154.1 million from its USD Cash pool for the buybacks and only $13 million for Bitcoin. The remaining $15.7 million for the Bitcoin purchase came from selling 92,894 new MSTR common shares.
Strategy said it will hold STRC's 12% rate until the stock trades steadily near its $100 issue price. That's a commitment with a cost: the dividend runs whether or not Bitcoin does.
Schiff's read on the money flow
Gold advocate Peter Schiff argued that Strategy has lost its Bitcoin-buying power because STRC no longer raises fresh money. The filing doesn't disclose what STRC's last sale price was, but the company's willingness to spend six times more on buybacks than on Bitcoin gives Schiff's argument a factual hook.
Strategy still sits on a $4.88 billion USD Reserve for dividends and interest, plus $833.4 million in USD Cash. So this isn't a liquidity crunch — it's a choice about where the cash goes.
A $20.91 billion paper gain, and the tax asset it reversed
The SEC filing estimates Strategy booked a $20.91 billion gain on its Bitcoin in the third quarter. At the end of June, the company's Bitcoin was worth less than it paid; the rebound let it reverse a $4.12 billion tax asset tied to that earlier loss.
At a Bitcoin price of about $85,377, Strategy's stash is worth roughly $72.4 billion. The company paid $63.97 billion in total, or $75,441 per coin. That's a healthy mark-to-market gain — on paper, at least, and dependent on a price that moves.
The October 28 vote
Shareholders vote on October 28 on a plan to pay daily dividends across Strategy's four preferred stocks. The STRC buyback and the 12% rate commitment are, in effect, the setup for that vote. If daily dividends pass, the cash-management math gets more complicated — and the Bitcoin purchases may have to compete harder for dollars.
For now, the pattern is clear: Strategy is funding its Bitcoin buys from equity sales and its buybacks from cash, while telling the market it will defend STRC near par. Whether that's a Bitcoin story or a preferred-stock story depends on which line of the filing you read first.
