Strategy’s Michael Saylor hinted at something few expected to hear from him — that his company might actually sell some of its Bitcoin. Not out of desperation, but as a calculated signal to the market.
A Message, Not A Meltdown
Speaking during the company’s first-quarter earnings call on Tuesday, Saylor said Strategy could sell a portion of its holdings to fund a dividend — mainly to prove a point.
“We’ll probably sell some Bitcoin to fund a dividend, just to inoculate the market, just to send the message that we did it,” he said.
The idea, as Saylor put it, is to show investors that the company is stable, Bitcoin is fine, and the world hasn’t fallen apart.
It marks a sharp turn from the stance he held as recently as February, when he told CNBC that Strategy would “buy Bitcoin every quarter forever.”
At the time, he also said the company could weather a price drop to as low as $8,000 without being forced to sell any of its holdings to cover debt.
Strategy now holds 818,334 Bitcoin, valued at roughly $66.7 billion. That’s a lot riding on a single asset.
Big Loss, Bigger Context
The earnings call came after Strategy posted a $12.5 billion net loss for the first quarter. Most of that loss was tied to unrealized declines in the value of its Bitcoin holdings, which dropped 23.5% during the quarter.
The market reacted swiftly — shares of MSTR fell 4.33% in after-hours trading, closing at $178.80.
Still, Saylor remains focused on the long game. Strategy has been funding its Bitcoin purchases through dividend-paying preferred stock offerings, including one called Stretch, ticker STRC.
Reports indicate that Stretch carries an 11% monthly dividend and has helped finance much of the 145,834 Bitcoin the company acquired this year alone.
Saylor said he wants Stretch to become the largest credit instrument in the world, arguing that growth in assets under management will attract more liquidity and broader adoption.
Several Bitcoin-focused decentralized finance protocols — including Pendle and Saturn — have already begun tokenizing Stretch’s dividends, allowing them to be traded on the open market.
Neobanks And The Bitcoin Credit Push
Saylor is also eyeing a new frontier: Bitcoin-backed digital yield accounts offered through neobanks. He said he expects these accounts could offer returns of up to 8%, which he argued would outpace most stablecoin offerings.
According to Saylor, roughly three dozen initiatives in the Bitcoin credit space have emerged in the past two to three months alone.
Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from TradingView
