Strategy Bitcoin Sale Barely Moves Price, Draws Criticism

Strategy sold 1,638 bitcoin last week, its third disposal of the year, and the reaction was close to nothing. The largest corporate holder of bitcoin disclosed the sale in a Form 8-K filed Monday morning, having moved the coins between July 27 and August 2 at an average of $63,957 for about $104.7 million. Bitcoin sat near $63,700 as the filing hit, little changed on the day after a brief slip under $63,000. after a brief slip under $63,000. A year ago that combination of headlines would have knocked several points off the price. This time the market treated it as routine.

Strategy increased its USD Reserve by $250M and repurchased $81M of $STRC. This increased USD Duration by 57 days to 2.3 years and tightened STRC’s BTC Credit by 5 bps. As of 8/2/26, we hold ₿842,138 in our BTC Reserve and $4.0B in our USD Reserve. $MSTR https://t.co/t7bGZJ8Q3o

— Michael Saylor (@saylor) August 3, 2026

A seller the market stopped fearing

That calm is the actual story here. Strategy spent five years as the most reliable single bid in the bitcoin market, a buyer that only ever added and never trimmed. It has now sold in three straight disclosures, and each sale has drawn a smaller flinch from the price than the one before. The 1,638 coins amount to less than 0.2% of the company’s stack and a rounding error against daily spot volume, so the direct supply pressure was never going to matter much.

What changed is expectation. Once traders accepted that Strategy had turned into an occasional seller rather than a permanent buyer, the individual filings lost their shock value. The company’s own numbers explain why the selling started. Strategy posted a GAAP net loss of $8.22 billion in the second quarter, almost all of it a non-cash writedown on its bitcoin after a roughly 14% price drop, while the cash it owes on preferred dividends jumped to $400.7 million from $49.1 million a year earlier. Those dividends do not pay themselves.

Selling bitcoin to defend a $100 share price

The proceeds tell you what the sales are for. Of the $104.7 million raised last week, about $52.4 million covered dividends on Strategy’s preferred shares and roughly $52.3 million went to buying back STRC, the variable-rate preferred stock the company wants to keep trading at its $100 par value. Strategy repurchased 912,143 STRC shares for $81.2 million over the week, drawing on both the bitcoin sale and a separate $290.6 million common-stock raise through its at-the-market program. Most of that equity money, $250 million, went into the dollar reserve, which now stands at $4 billion.

Here is the logic. STRC pays a 12% annual yield and is designed to hover around $100, functioning as a credit instrument rather than a bet on bitcoin. Keeping it near par requires steady cash and occasional buybacks. With bitcoin trading below Strategy’s $75,419 average cost, issuing new common stock to buy more coins would dilute shareholders at a bad price, so the company is doing the opposite: raising cash to service its obligations and support the preferred stack. Michael Saylor framed the week’s moves as tightening STRC’s bitcoin credit by 5 basis points and extending the dollar reserve’s duration by 57 days to 2.3 years.

Ran Neuner calls the loop self-defeating

The sharper criticism is that the whole exercise runs in a circle. Ran Neuner, one of the louder voices questioning Strategy’s pivot, sketched out where the logic breaks and landed on even odds that Saylor is either signaling to rating agencies that every balance-sheet instrument is fair game or has simply lost the thread. What makes the jab hard to wave off is the math behind it. Strategy is selling bitcoin under its own $75,419 cost to prop up a yield product, betting it can repurchase higher later.

Here's a great STRATEGY:

– Sell Bitcoin (at the lows).
– Use proceeds to buy STRC, try to get it to $100.
– When STRC hits $100, try buy the same amount Bitcoin that you sold again.

Either Saylor is trying to prove a point to a rating agency, that he will buy and sell all… pic.twitter.com/zWGIsZvh0F

— Ran Neuner (@cryptomanran) August 3, 2026

The criticism lands on a specific tension. Strategy sold its June batch of 3,588 coins below cost, and last week’s sale went out near $63,957 while the firm’s own basis sits above $75,000. Selling low to fund a yield product, then hoping to buy back higher, only works on paper if bitcoin cooperates. Saylor continues to insist the company expects to stay a net buyer, yet the filings show it added just 37 bitcoin between late May and late July before shedding 1,638 in a single week. On a net basis, Strategy now holds fewer coins than it did in spring.

What the chart says about the standoff

The price backdrop helps explain the muted response. Bitcoin has been stuck in a range since June, trading roughly between $58,000 and $68,000, and it closed the session near $63,700. On the daily chart the 0.236 Fibonacci retracement at $63,679 has been acting as a shelf, a level buyers keep defending, which is why the dip under $63,000 did not hold. The 14-day RSI reads 48.67, just below the neutral 50 mark, meaning selling and buying pressure sit close to balance with a slight lean to the downside. Nothing in the momentum picture points to an imminent breakout or breakdown.

Glassnode described the market in similar terms, noting that spot demand is weak and derivatives positioning stays defensive. The firm pointed to steadier on-chain activity, holders who are not selling, and continued ETF inflows as the forces keeping a floor under the price, even as broader conviction stays muted. That balance is exactly what let the market absorb a Strategy sale without flinching.

The net-buyer claim faces its real test

Strategy stepping back matters more than any single sale. For years the company pulled a slice of supply off the market on a near-weekly basis, and a buyer that only ever bids provides a floor of demand that disappears the moment it turns conditional. The market cleared last week’s sale easily, but a version of Strategy that sells into weakness and buys into strength changes the arithmetic at the margin for everyone else.

The pullback is not unique to Strategy either, since most of the treasury firms that copied Saylor’s playbook stopped buying or turned sellers once the market rolled over late last year, with only a handful such as Bitmine and Strive still adding to their stacks.

For now the company’s stated priority is returning STRC to par, a goal analysts at TD Cowen and Benchmark both flagged after the Q2 call while keeping Buy ratings on the stock. Benchmark still trimmed its MSTR target to $435 from $570 and cut its year-end bitcoin assumption to $100,000 from $125,000. Whether Saylor’s net-buyer promise survives will depend on the next few filings, and on whether bitcoin climbs back above the cost basis that currently makes every sale a loss on paper.