MicroStrategy Bitcoin buys drop 91% as STRC cadence cools

MicroStrategy reported a purchase of 3,273 bitcoin for $255 million, a 91% decline in weekly cash spent compared with the prior week. The company made the purchase a week after buying 34,164 BTC for $2.54 billion and issued about 1.4 million common shares, using proceeds from those sales to fund the latest buy.

MicroStrategy’s preferred share, STRC, pays a variable monthly dividend and currently yields about 11.5%. The security is designed to trade near $100 but fell below that level after an ex-dividend date on April 14. Company leaders have proposed shifting STRC to twice-monthly dividends to reduce the uneven timing of cash inflows tied to the monthly schedule.

On Monday MicroStrategy reported it holds 818,334 BTC. At roughly $77,800 per coin, that stake had a market value of about $63.6 billion and an unrealized gain of roughly $1.8 billion against the company’s average cost basis. Earlier this year the position had traded below cost at times.

Common shares traded near $171.36 and STRC around $99.60. Traders on a prediction market placed the probability that MicroStrategy will sell any Bitcoin this year at about 12%, down from roughly 18% a month earlier.

Executive Chairman Michael Saylor has been active on social media as Bitcoin’s price recovered, posting an AI-generated video over the weekend that depicted him fighting a bear and sharing an image the prior week showing him on a yacht.

MicroStrategy began shifting its treasury strategy toward bitcoin more than five years ago and has raised capital through common and preferred offerings to fund purchases. The monthly dividend cadence for STRC has produced uneven inflows and contributed to variations in the timing and size of the company’s bitcoin acquisitions.