MicroStrategy Sells 32 BTC; ECB Calls for Digital Euro

MicroStrategy sold 32 Bitcoin last week, reporting the transaction in an SEC Form 8-K. The coins sold at an average price of $77,135 each, generating roughly $2.5 million and trimming the company’s holdings from 843,738 BTC to 843,706 BTC. The filing states the proceeds will be used to pay distributions on STRC perpetual preferred shares.

The company’s sale is its first reported Bitcoin disposal since a 2022 tax-loss trade, when it briefly sold 704 BTC and repurchased 810 BTC two days later.

Founder and executive chairman Michael Saylor posted a customary bubble chart on social media with the caption ‘Working Better’ in the days before the filing. A proxy vote that will determine whether the company can pay semi-monthly dividends on the preferred stock is approaching; retail shareholder support is expected to be an important factor in that vote.

Bitcoin’s market price slipped below $72,000 after the filing and was trading near $71,939 at the time of the report.

In Seoul, European Central Bank Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel addressed stablecoins and tokenized finance at the 2026 Bank of Korea International Conference on Central Banks and the Future of Money. Schnabel compared stablecoins to money market funds and warned they can introduce risks such as bank disintermediation, runs, fire sales and disruptions to monetary policy transmission.

Schnabel added that ‘the growing use of stablecoins may further cement the international dominance of the U.S. dollar,’ noting most stablecoins are dollar-denominated. She outlined a two-part Eurosystem response: a retail digital euro for general public use and tokenized wholesale central bank money for market infrastructure.

Schnabel referenced the Eurosystem’s Appia roadmap for tokenized financial markets and mentioned Pontes, a planned distributed ledger technology settlement bridge that will link tokenized settlement to the Eurosystem’s TARGET services, with a launch target in the third quarter of 2026.

Separately, a pseudonymous white-hat hacker known as 0xflorent announced recovery of about 1,003 Ether, roughly $2 million, that had been locked in a faulty smart contract from a 2016 Hong Coin ICO. The contract was meant to auto-refund investors after the fundraiser failed, but a bug in the refund function left funds inaccessible. 0xflorent worked with the original project creators to exploit a flawed admin function, reset token balances and trigger refunds for 48 investors.

MicroStrategy is the largest publicly traded corporate holder of Bitcoin and has used the asset as a primary treasury reserve. The firm’s preferred-stock financing and dividend obligations have prompted investor questions about whether future payouts could lead to additional sales of its Bitcoin holdings.