Strategy’s Big BTC Sale

In the first week of July 2026, the market was surprised when Strategy sold 3,588 BTC, worth roughly $216M. This marked the historic occasion of Strategy voluntarily decreasing their BTC treasury substantially for the first time. In this analysis, we dive into why Strategy was ultimately pressured into this decision, and how their STRC strategy has potentially backfired on them.

STRC’s Severe Depegging and Paused Bitcoin Flywheel

STRC (Stretch) is Strategy’s preferred stock, designed to provide investors with a steady cash dividend while giving Strategy additional capital to purchase more Bitcoin. STRC is then supposed to be softly pegged to $100, with Strategy adjusting STRC’s dividend rates to softly maintain this peg. In June 2026, STRC depegged severely and fell to an ATL of $71.25, this prompted Strategy to substantially raise STRC dividend rates in July from 11.50% to 12.00%, allowing STRC to recover to $87.5. Currently, STRC still remains depegged, and in simple terms, without being at parity#, Strategy is unable* to effectively raise any further funds to buy Bitcoin.

*While Strategy is able to raise funds to buy Bitcoin through other methods, STRC is Strategy’s main method of raising funds to buy Bitcoin (~$8.5B), without further diluting shareholders. Effectively, Strategy’s preferred method of acquiring Bitcoin has been halted.

#STRC’s dividends are accrued on its $100 stated amount, regardless of its current trading price. Selling new shares at $71 to raise cash is ultimately detrimental to Strategy’s cash reserves and destroys the value of STRC with every share issued.

Why STRC Can Force Strategy to Sell Bitcoin

STRC has recovered from its lows of $71 and currently sits around ~$88. The good news is that STRC’s dividend mechanism is still working, and so the peg can likely be restored in time with further rate increases. The bad news is that this puts additional strain on Strategy’s cash reserves. These STRC dividends are ultimately paid with cash, not Bitcoin, faced with increasing pressures, Strategy may be forced to sell Bitcoin, to have enough cash to pay these dividends. In the next section we will cover STRC’s expected cost and Strategy’s cash reserves.

Strategy’s Dwindling Reserve Run Rates, Prompting Bitcoin Sales

STRC's annualized obligation grew from $0.37B in January to $0.98B by April, a 164% increase in three months. Currently, Strategy’s internal policy mandates a 1-year minimum run rate, meaning that their cash reserves must cover Strategy’s dividend obligations not just across STRC, but also its four other preferred series (STRK, STRF, STRD, and STRE).

In May 2026, the run rate fell to 0.89 years, below the 1-year minimum, driven by a specific, disclosed cash outlay (a debt buyback) rather than dividends outpacing reserve funding. Regardless, this meant Strategy needed to rebuild their cash reserves in order meet their own policy mandates and as a cash buffer. On top of this, STRC’s depegged status meant an expected increase in dividend obligations throughout 2026.

Ultimately, with a depleted cash reserve (albeit restored in June 2026) and pressured with rising dividend rates, Strategy announced and authorized a sale of up to $1.25B of its Bitcoin treasury. This first sale of $216M in Bitcoin is likely part of Strategy’s plan to rebuild its cash reserves. This would then allow Strategy to further raise STRC’s dividend rates, and eventually restore the STRC peg. After which, we can likely see Strategy resuming their STRC fund raises and Bitcoin buys once more. Until then, since $1.03B is still available under the current authorization and STRC remains depegged ~12% at the time of writing, we can expect further Bitcoin sales from Strategy.

Important Assumptions

Two things temper how far this run rate can be trusted. First, this analysis is built entirely on STRC's own obligation, but the USD Reserve doesn't belong to STRC alone. It's shared across all five of Strategy's preferred series (STRC, STRK, STRF, STRD, and STRE); STRC is the largest claim on it, not the only one. This run rate should thus be taken as an optimistic estimate, the true run rate is likely lower. Second, we could only confirm the reserve balance directly for five of the seven months in this window. March and April are assumed flat at February's level, not independently verified, so the middle of the trend should be read as a reasonable estimate rather than a confirmed figure.

Methodology

STRC price figures for January through May 2026 are exact ex-dividend closing prices sourced from strcincome.com's dividend tracker. June and July figures combine confirmed daily closes from StockAnalysis.com / S&P Global Market Intelligence with the confirmed all-time low of $71.25 (June 26, 2026, TradingView) and the confirmed July 1, 2026 close of $87.46 (Investing.com).

Dividend rate figures for all seven months are directly confirmed via Strategy Inc SEC 8-K filings and press releases.

STRC outstanding balance is derived, not directly disclosed on a monthly basis. It is built from confirmed period-total STRC ATM proceeds disclosed in Strategy's 8-K filings (including the initial IPO face value, Q4 2025 quarterly total, the January 2026 monthly figure, and the Q1 2026 quarterly total), allocated across individual months using weekly BTC-purchase dollar volume as a proxy weight where only a multi-month total was disclosed. The April-onward balance of $8.54 billion is cross-validated against Strategy's own public statement that "STRC has scaled to $8.5 billion in just 9 months" (Q1 2026 earnings release, May 5, 2026). Confidence is high for January and March, medium for February, and medium-to-low for April through July, where balance is assumed flat pending confirmation of continued zero ATM issuance for the full period.

Annualized dividend obligation is calculated as STRC outstanding balance multiplied by the dividend rate in effect at each period. This figure reflects STRC alone and does not include Strategy's other four preferred series (STRK, STRF, STRD, STRE), which share the same USD Reserve. A run rate calculated against Strategy's total obligation across all five series would be lower than the figures shown here.

USD Reserve balances for January, February, May, June, and July 2026 are directly confirmed via Strategy Inc SEC 8-K filings. March and April figures could not be located in this research and are assumed flat at the February level; the true balance in those two months is unconfirmed and may have differed.

Run rate is calculated as USD Reserve divided by STRC's annualized obligation for the same period, expressed in years.

If you cite these insights, we would appreciate a link credit to this article on CoinGecko, which allows us to keep supplying you with useful data-led content.

Related reading: Strategy's STRC: Capture Bitcoin-Linked Yield via Saturn & Pendle

This study is for illustrative and informational purposes only, and is not financial advice.

Data Table: STRC Obligation and Reserve Run Rate, January-July 2026

*Reserve balance for March and April 2026 is not confirmed by any SEC filing found in this research; it is assumed flat at the February level. †June price is a representative estimate bridging the $88.59 close on June 18 and the $71.25 all-time low on June 26, not a single date's close.