Strategy, the company that holds more Bitcoin than any other business, did not buy a single coin last week. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, October 26, it said it made no Bitcoin purchases or sales between October 19 and October 25 — its first pause since mid-September.
Instead, the company spent about $205 million buying back its own STRC preferred shares.
Key facts
- Bitcoin bought last week: none. The week before, Strategy had bought 267 BTC for about $22 million.
- Bitcoin held: 848,517 BTC, unchanged — more than 4% of all the Bitcoin that will ever exist.
- Cost: about $64 billion in total, or an average of $75,446 per coin. With Bitcoin trading near $80,000, the holding is worth roughly $68 billion.
- Share buyback: about 2.07 million STRC preferred shares repurchased for $204.9 million.
- No new shares sold: the company did not raise money by selling new stock that week.
How it paid
The buyback came out of Strategy’s day-to-day cash pot, which fell from about $447 million to $242 million in a week. A separate, much larger reserve of $4.83 billion, kept aside to pay dividends on preferred shares and interest on debt, was left untouched.
This was the third big STRC buyback in a row, after about $193 million the week before and $192 million the week before that. Strategy still has about $957 million left under its $3 billion plan to buy back preferred shares, plus $1 billion under a separate plan for its ordinary shares.
What STRC is
STRC is a type of preferred share that Strategy sells to investors who want regular income payments rather than a direct bet on Bitcoin. Selling these shares has been one of the main ways the company raised money to buy coins. Buying them back does the opposite: it reduces the amount of money the company owes to income investors, but it uses cash that could otherwise have gone into Bitcoin.
Why it matters
Strategy’s weekly purchases have long been watched as a steady source of demand for Bitcoin. A one-week pause is not a change of strategy — the company still holds every coin it owns and has not sold any. But it shows that, for now, it is choosing to spend its cash on its own securities rather than on more Bitcoin, at a time when the price is hovering around $80,000 and markets are waiting for this week’s U.S. Federal Reserve decision.
This article is for information only and is not financial advice.
