In brief
- Strategy has not bought Bitcoin since June, and has now gone a second straight week without selling any either.
- It raised $2.01 billion net selling MSTR stock, six times the previous week’s total.
- Most of that went into USD Cash, a newly created pool the company said may be used to acquire Bitcoin.
Strategy raised just over $2 billion selling its own shares last week without touching its Bitcoin, according to an 8-K filed Monday, and put most of the proceeds into a liquidity account it created the same day.
The Bitcoin treasury company sold 18,261,118 MSTR shares for $2.01 billion net, an average of about $109.88 each, against $96.48 a week earlier. Of that, $136.4 million went to buying back STRC preferred stock and $300 million into its dollar reserve, with the remaining $1.57 billion going into the new account.
That account, USD Cash, is described in the filing as a separately designated pool of dollar liquidity held for general Bitcoin treasury purposes. The list of those purposes is broad: acquiring Bitcoin, paying preferred dividends and interest, repurchasing MSTR or preferred stock, repaying or redeeming convertible notes, and topping up the dollar reserve. It stood at $1.59 billion as of August 23.
Two pots, different rules
Strategy’s USD Cash pot is distinct from the firm’s existing USD Reserve, a $5.1 billion stash that is designated to cover preferred dividends and interest on debt. USD Cash carries no such restriction, and Strategy said it is intended to let management move faster in response to market conditions, “including dislocations in the markets for bitcoin or Strategy’s securities.”
The firm’s holdings stayed at 840,447 BTC, bought for $63.36 billion at an average of $75,385. Strategy has not bought Bitcoin since June, and has now gone two weeks without selling any either, having disposed of 6,948 BTC for roughly $432.5 million since May. It raised $334 million the previous week on the same basis.
Bitcoin’s rally has transformed Strategy’s position, and with the cryptocurrency now trading around $78,400, its stack is worth about $65.9 billion, some $2.6 billion above cost. A week ago, at $63,553, it was $9.9 billion underwater, and in July, with Bitcoin near $58,000, the company was about $13 billion down.
The STRC buyback took in 1,431,212 shares and leaves $516.6 million of the $1 billion digital credit securities repurchase program announced on June 29. A separate $1 billion authorization covering MSTR stock remains untouched.
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