Strategy Is Buying Back Stock Faster Than It Buys Bitcoin

Bitcoin

Strategy holds about 79% of the Bitcoin owned by treasury companies, but over the past two weeks it bought 584 BTC while Strive disclosed 6,133.

Galaxy Research’s Chart of the Week counts at least 1.073 million BTC in Bitcoin treasury companies, with 848,500 at Strategy and about 120,000 at Metaplanet, Twenty One and Strive combined. By our arithmetic that puts Strategy at about 79% of the total, and the share could be lower: Galaxy’s total is a floor, and roughly 104,500 BTC sit with companies it doesn’t name. Strategy’s own October 12 filing shows 848,250 BTC as of October 11, a 250-coin gap that is probably rounding in Galaxy’s figure.

Strive out-bought Strategy

The stack is Strategy’s, but the buying lately has been Strive’s. Strategy’s last two weekly updates disclosed 334 BTC for $28.7 million (September 28 to October 4) and 250 BTC for $21.5 million (October 5 to 11), both at about $86,000 a coin. Over the same stretch Strive, now the fourth-largest public holder, disclosed 3,311 BTC, about $280 million, for October 5 to 9, and another 2,822 BTC, about $235 million, on October 14. That took its holdings to 35,595 BTC.

TD Cowen had forecast about 4,750 BTC of Strive purchases for the whole fourth quarter. The pace came at a cost: warrant exercises added shares and pressured Strive’s Bitcoin per share, the analysts said, and with no $27 warrants left they expect that pressure to ease. Strive also expanded a preferred offering to 7 million shares at $90, aiming to raise $630 million, with closing expected October 20.

Strategy hasn’t stopped buying. It bought 4,603 BTC, about $370 million, in late August. But an independent analyst told Cointelegraph that Strategy raised $5.41 billion from new common stock in the third quarter and ended it with only 1,666 more Bitcoin than at the end of June. Much of the money, he said, went to cash reserves and preferred holders.

Where Strategy’s cash went

In the week to October 4, Strategy’s filing shows $28.7 million spent on Bitcoin and $176.3 million repurchasing its STRC preferred stock. In the week to October 11 it spent $21.5 million on Bitcoin and $192.4 million on STRC, about nine times as much. Across the two weeks, STRC buybacks came to $368.7 million against $50.2 million of BTC.

Week to October 11. Source: Strategy’s October 12 filing.

Strategy says it wants STRC to trade close to its $100 stated amount, in a range of about $99 to $100, and lists repurchases among its tools. Last week’s buyback averaged about $99.58 a share. Then STRC fell from $99.53 to $97.72 on Friday, its lowest close since September 16, Bitcoin.com News reported.

The pot that pays for buybacks is shrinking. USD Cash, which funded the previous week’s repurchases, fell from $833.4 million on October 4 to $640.5 million on October 11, and about $354.8 million of repurchase authority was left after the board doubled the programme to $2 billion in early September. At the recent pace, that authority covers about two more weeks unless the board raises it again.

The separate USD Reserve, which can pay only preferred dividends and debt interest, stood at $4.88 billion. In its June 29 framework Strategy put its yearly dividends and interest at about $1.76 billion and set a policy floor of 12 months of coverage. Against that June figure, today’s reserve would cover about 33 months, up from 17.4 in June.

Strategy has also sold Bitcoin to fund that reserve. Between June 29 and July 5 it sold 3,588 BTC for about $216 million, its largest disposal ever, to pay preferred distributions and replenish the dollar reserve, The Block reported. The June framework authorises further sales to fund the reserve (up to $1.25 billion), dividends and interest, and repurchases.

Bitcoin near $81,600 on Sunday is about 8% above Strategy’s $75,444 average cost, a paper gain of roughly $5 billion. In July, at about $64,000, the position was about $9.7 billion under water. The 250 coins bought last week cost an average $86,194, more than today’s price.

The week MSCI hit the premium

On October 15 MSCI finalised rules that make “non-operating companies” ineligible for its global indexes, replacing an interim limit on companies with 50% or more of their assets in digital assets. A simulation flagged Strategy, Metaplanet and Yellow Cake. MSCI publishes the affected list on November 11, and changes take effect at the close on November 30. Current members come out only if they fail the screen in each of their two most recent annual filing periods, so removal isn’t automatic, and Strategy argues that Bitcoin is an operating segment under US accounting rules.

MSTR fell 9.56% to $136.83 on Friday, the first session after the news. Strategy says MSCI-linked funds hold about 13 million of its shares, about 3.1% of the total and less than a day of trading volume. At Friday’s close that is roughly $1.8 billion. TIKR argues the larger cost is to the premium: losing a class of passive buyers makes it harder to sell shares above the value of the Bitcoin behind them.

That premium is what Strategy calls mNAV, its market value compared with the value of its Bitcoin after debt and preferred stock. Above 1.0x, selling new shares adds Bitcoin per share. Strategy’s own figures, filed with the SEC, put it at 1.06x on August 10. In June, CEO Phong Le said Strategy was moving “from one-way capital issuance to active capital management,” and the framework says common-stock issuance will stay disciplined at or near 1.0x. TIKR reported Saylor saying that if MSTR traded at “a very, very deep discount to NAV,” Strategy would probably buy it back. A $1.0 billion authority remains.

The STRC vote on October 28

Shareholders vote on October 28 on amendments giving STRC and other preferred securities a record date every calendar day. If they pass by October 31 and the amended terms take effect by November 1, November’s dividends will be paid daily, totalling $1.00 a share at the 12% annual rate. If not, the dividend declared for November 15 is paid instead.

The October 16 filing says management will recommend keeping the rate at 12% until STRC shows sustained, healthy trading near $100 a share. It also says Strategy expects the November payments to be treated as a return of capital for US tax purposes, to the extent of a shareholder’s tax basis. TIKR reports third-quarter results the next day, after the close on October 29.

What Monday’s filing could show

Saylor posted Strategy’s Bitcoin tracker on X on Sunday with the caption “We found room for more orange.” His Sunday orange-dot posts have frequently preceded a Monday filing that discloses a Bitcoin purchase, The Block notes, and the last two did: 334 BTC on October 5 and 250 BTC on October 12.

We found room for more orange. https://t.co/XAgiEZbXgO

— Michael Saylor (@saylor) October 18, 2026

Three numbers in Monday’s filing will matter. One is how much Bitcoin was bought. The second is how it was paid for: in the last two weeks $15.7 million and $21.0 million came from selling MSTR shares, while $13.0 million and $0.5 million came from USD Cash, the same pot that funds buybacks. The third is how much STRC was repurchased.

The first test is Monday’s filing. If its bitcoin purchase is again smaller than its STRC repurchase, the 79% will keep describing what Strategy has bought rather than what it is buying.

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This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.

Author

Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coindoo and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets – crypto first, then everything else.

It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn’t fully understand it – so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can’t properly understand one without the other.

What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it’s happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline – price up, price down, here’s a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn?

He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University – not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That’s probably why he hasn’t stopped.

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