Bitcoin treasury company Strategy has made its first BTC sale since 2022, putting an end to a 3.5-year phase of only accumulation.
Strategy Just Sold Bitcoin Worth $2.5 Million
According to an 8-K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Strategy just made a Bitcoin sale. The amount involved in the transaction was relatively modest, only 32 BTC, but the story here is that the resolute HODLer of the cryptocurrency sold at all.
Led by Michael Saylor, Strategy has aggressively accumulated Bitcoin in recent years, announcing buys regularly on Mondays. Just two weeks ago, the firm announced a massive $2.01 billion acquisition. Last Monday, however, Strategy opted to not participate in any BTC accumulation, with Saylor noting that the company bought bonds instead. Now, with this Monday’s filing, the pause in buying has seemingly completely reversed into distribution.
The sale hasn’t come out of the blue. As reported by Bitcoinist, Saylor said in early May that Strategy could participate in some BTC selling 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,” noted the chairman.
In the SEC filing, Strategy noted that proceeds from the BTC sale are expected to be used to fund distributions, suggesting that it’s the sale Saylor hinted at. The firm parted with these tokens for a total of $2.5 million, coming down to an average of $77,135 per BTC.
While the new sale is an extraordinary event, it’s not without precedent. Back in December 2022, Strategy sold 704 BTC for tax-loss harvesting as BTC traded at the lowest levels of that year’s bear market. Shortly after, the firm bought back more of the asset than it had distributed. As such, it only remains to be seen what Strategy will do going forward this time.
Following the latest Bitcoin sale, the treasury company’s stack has shrunken to 843,706 BTC. The firm spent $63.87 billion to assemble these reserves, putting an average cost basis per coin at $75,699. The recent market decline has taken the cryptocurrency’s price below this mark, meaning that Saylor’s firm is in the red right now.
While Strategy has participated in distribution, Bitmine, the largest Ethereum treasury company, has accumulated more instead. As announced in a Monday press release, Bitmine added 26,497 ETH to its holdings over the past week.
After this new acquisition, the company’s Ethereum reserves have reached the 5.42 million ETH mark, corresponding to 4.49% of the asset’s total supply in circulation. Bitmine has set a goal of 5% of the ETH supply, so at the current figure, the firm is 90% on its way to the target.
BTC Price
The market has reacted negatively to the sale of the Strategy sale as the Bitcoin spot price has slumped to $71,400.
The trend in the price of the crypto over the last five days | Source: BTCUSDT on TradingView
