Strategy bought 267 BTC for more than $22 million last week, its sixth purchase since August. The company now holds 848,517 BTC alongside $5.3 billion in USD assets as of October 18, according to its latest disclosure.
The buy lands two days before MSCI announces whether asset-holding companies like Strategy should stay in its indexes. A decision is expected November 11. Strategy's shares, not its Bitcoin, are the ones carrying the overhang: an estimated $2.8 billion of potential selling is tied to a possible index exclusion.
The buyback alongside the buy
Strategy also repurchased roughly $193 million of its STRC preferred shares and raised the authorization on its Digital Credit Securities Repurchase Program from $2 billion to $3 billion. That's a company putting capital to work on two fronts at once — accumulating coins and retiring preferred stock.
The combination matters. The Bitcoin purchase keeps the treasury growing. The buyback trims obligations tied to the preferreds and signals management sees value in its own paper. Neither move is huge relative to the company's balance sheet, but both are consistent with the playbook it has run since August.
Why the MSCI review has teeth
MSCI's question is straightforward: should a company whose main asset is Bitcoin sit in the same indexes as operating businesses? If the answer is no, index funds tracking those benchmarks would have to sell Strategy shares, and the estimate on the table is $2.8 billion.
The direct effect falls on the stock, not on Bitcoin. The larger concern is second-order. A weaker share price makes it harder for Strategy to raise capital on favorable terms, and raising capital is how it buys more Bitcoin. The treasury strategy and the equity price are tied together, whether or not the indexes treat them that way.
The November 11 decision is the next hard date. Until then, the overhang sits on the stock.
Bitcoin's tentative recovery
Bitcoin traded at $81,500 after recovering from a dip below $80,000 and briefly rose above $83,000 on October 19 as oil prices eased. The move higher didn't last, and the technicals don't confirm a fresh leg up. RSI is below 50 and the MACD histogram is negative.
Support sits around $82,200 and $80,000, with the 20-day EMA near $82,579. Resistance is around $83,000 to $84,000, and there's a more substantial selling area near $87,000. The October 19 pop stalled right at the lower edge of that first resistance band, which tells you buyers haven't taken control yet.
A new Layer 2 pitch
Elsewhere in the market, Bitcoin Hyper ($HYPER) is marketing itself as a Bitcoin Layer 2 that incorporates the Solana Virtual Machine. The presale is priced at $0.0136875 and has raised more than $33.1 million, with a 30% staking APY offered to presale buyers.
Presale projects with staking yields attached are a familiar category, and a 30% APY is the kind of number that draws attention and skepticism in equal measure. The project is separate from anything Strategy is doing. But it's worth noting what gets funded while the largest corporate Bitcoin holder waits on an index decision — capital keeps rotating into new Layer 2 bets even as the blue-chip treasury trade faces a governance question.
The next concrete event is MSCI's November 11 ruling. Strategy's treasury grew again this week; whether the index committee rewards that or penalizes it is the open question.
