Strategy Sells Bitcoin to Save STRC While Bitmine Buys Back Stock

• Strategy sold 1,690 BTC to fund a buyback of its own STRC preferred stock, marking a break from its buy-only Bitcoin approach.
• Bitmine made its smallest weekly ETH purchase of 2026 while repurchasing $50-58 million of its own shares instead.
• Bitcoin and Ethereum both slipped on August 10, with ETH down over 2% on the 4-hour chart and BTC down roughly 1.3%.
• ETH accounted for the bulk of Monday’s liquidations, and long positions took the heaviest hit.

Bitcoin traded near $64,290 and Ethereum near $1,879 on Monday afternoon, both giving back gains from earlier in the week as red candles dominated the 4-hour charts on Binance. The pullback pushed RSI readings down toward the mid-30s and high-30s on both assets, and it arrived alongside a liquidation wave that hit Ethereum traders harder than anyone else in the market. Over $53 million in ETH positions got wiped out in 24 hours, with $43 million of that coming from longs betting on a continuation higher. According to data from CoinGlass, Bitcoin’s liquidations were smaller by comparison, at roughly $35 million total, split between $24 million in longs and $11 million in shorts.

ETH longs absorb $43 million in liquidations as RSI drops to 36

Ethereum’s 4-hour chart shows a drop from an intraday high near $1,923 down to a close around $1,879, a decline of roughly 2.17%. That candle alone accounts for a meaningful chunk of Monday’s damage, and it follows a choppy stretch through late July and early August where ETH oscillated between $1,820 and $1,965 without establishing a clear direction. Bitcoin’s move was smaller in percentage terms but still notable, sliding from an open near $65,126 to a close around $64,290, a drop of about 1.28%.

Ethereum’s $53.15 million in wipeouts over 24 hours dwarfed Bitcoin’s $35.39 million, and within that ETH figure, longs made up $43.04 million against just $10.11 million in shorts. That lopsided ratio means traders who piled into ETH expecting the rally to keep running got caught when price reversed. Bitcoin’s split was more balanced, with $23.97 million in longs against $11.42 million in shorts.

An RSI reading below 40 doesn’t mean a bounce is guaranteed, but it does suggest that a chunk of the recent selling pressure has already been absorbed. Ethereum’s RSI at 35.99 sits closer to oversold territory than Bitcoin’s 40.52, which lines up with the heavier liquidation total on the ETH side.

Why Strategy sold BTC at a loss to defend a 12% dividend

Strategy sold 1,690 BTC at an average price of $64,262, generating $108.6 million in net proceeds, and used every dollar of that to repurchase 1.15 million shares of its own STRC preferred stock. The sale represents a departure from the approach the company built its entire identity around, and it came at a technical loss relative to Strategy’s overall cost basis of $75,385 per coin.

Strategy increased its USD Reserve by $650M and repurchased $109M of $STRC. This increased USD Duration by 143 days to 2.7 yrs and tightened STRC's BTC Credit by 10 bps. As of 8/9/26, we hold ₿840,447 in our BTC Reserve and $4.65B in our USD Reserve. $MSTR…

— Michael Saylor (@saylor) August 10, 2026

The reason traces back to STRC, a preferred stock instrument paying a 12% annualized dividend meant to hold at a $100 par value. Market skepticism toward Strategy’s Bitcoin-heavy balance sheet pushed STRC down to roughly $71.25 earlier in the year, well under par. Alongside the BTC sale, Strategy raised $653.1 million through an at-the-market offering of 6.59 million MSTR shares, with $650 million of that routed into the company’s fiat reserve and the remaining $3.1 million kept as cash. That combination extended Strategy’s fiat runway to 2.7 years while the company still holds 840,447 BTC.

Bitmine’s $257 million staking engine makes buybacks the better bet

Bitmine added just 7,391 ETH over the past week, worth around $14 million and the smallest weekly purchase the company has made in 2026. Chairman Tom Lee redirected treasury spending toward a $50-58 million buyback of roughly 3 million Bitmine shares under the company’s $4 billion repurchase program.

Bitmine now holds 5.81 million ETH, equal to 4.8% of circulating supply, putting the company within reach of what it has called its 5% ownership target. Of that stack, 87% (5.06 million ETH) sits staked through Bitmine’s MAVAN platform, generating an estimated $257 million in annualized staking revenue. That staking income functions as a self-funding cash engine, and it’s the piece that makes the buyback decision easier to justify: with ETH already producing steady yield, buying more of it offers less marginal upside than buying Bitmine shares that have historically outperformed ETH during ETH-over-BTC rallies. ETH beat BTC by 1,100 basis points in July, and Lee appears to be betting that BMNR stock captures more of that outperformance than the underlying token does. The staking exposure also connects to the ongoing debate over how EIP-8361 could reshape staking economics, a question that matters directly to a treasury this dependent on staking yield for its cash flow.

A technical loss on BTC, a premium on MSTR: how the trade actually works

The easy read on Strategy’s sale is that Saylor blinked. The mechanics say otherwise. STRC’s dividend obligation is fixed and immediate; if the preferred stock keeps trading under par, refinancing or servicing that 12% coupon gets more expensive and more precarious. Strategy chose to sell a relatively small slice of its BTC holdings, at a technical loss, to defend the credit instrument that keeps the rest of the capital structure functioning. It also chose to raise fresh equity at a premium rather than sell more Bitcoin to fund the fiat reserve, which limits how much of the treasury actually left the balance sheet. Selling 1,690 BTC out of 840,447 is not a retreat from Bitcoin; it’s a decision to protect the financing structure that allows the company to keep holding the other 838,757 coins without being forced into a larger, less controlled sale later.

Bitmine’s logic runs on a similar principle from a different angle. Once 87% of a treasury is staked and throwing off $257 million a year in yield, the company already has a reliable income stream without buying another token. Repurchasing undervalued shares becomes the higher-return move on a dollar-for-dollar basis, particularly when the stock has a track record of outrunning the underlying asset during the exact kind of rally ETH just had against BTC.

What STRC’s price over the next few weeks will confirm

Watch STRC’s price over the coming weeks; if the buyback succeeds in pushing it back toward par, expect Strategy to lean on this playbook again rather than treat it as a one-off. A second round of BTC sales tied to preferred stock support would confirm this is now a standing tool in Strategy’s capital management, not a single emergency move. On the Bitmine side, the 5% ETH supply threshold is close enough that the next few weekly reports will show whether Lee prioritizes crossing it or keeps favoring buybacks as long as BMNR trades at a discount to the value of its ETH and staking income. The EIP-8361 staking discussion adds another variable worth tracking, since any change to staking reward structures would directly affect the $257 million annual figure that currently underwrites Bitmine’s buyback strategy.

Whatever the public reaction to Strategy selling Bitcoin for the first time under its buy-only banner, the underlying moves from both companies point toward treasuries that are now actively managing balance sheet risk rather than just accumulating and waiting. That’s a meaningfully different posture than the one either company operated under a year ago.