Strategy buys 1,665 bitcoin, lifting holdings to 847,666 BTC

Strategy bought 1,665 bitcoin last week for $142.7 million, lifting its holdings to 847,666 BTC. The company paid for the coins by selling its own stock, and disclosed the buy in a filing to US regulators on 28 September.

Those numbers come from an 8-K filing by Strategy, the US-listed software firm that holds more bitcoin than any other public company. Michael Saylor is its executive chairman. Strategy bought the coins at an average price of $85,681 each between 21 and 27 September, the filing said.

Add it up and the running total is large. Strategy has now spent $63.95 billion buying bitcoin, at an average price of $75,437 a coin, including fees. Its 847,666 coins are about 4% of all the bitcoin that will ever exist. That average cost sits below where bitcoin trades today. The newest coins do not. The gap between what the firm holds and what it is worth on paper is the number treasury investors watch most.

How Strategy paid for the coins

Equity paid for it, not borrowing. Strategy sold 1,469,165 of its MSTR shares through an at-the-market program and raised $246.2 million after costs. Of that, $142.7 million went into bitcoin. The rest, $103.5 million, went to buying back a different security the company issues.

That security is STRC, a preferred stock Strategy sells to raise cash. The company repurchased 1,534,530 STRC shares for $151.7 million, using the stock-sale proceeds plus $48.1 million from its dollar reserves. Its cash pile barely moved. USD cash slipped from $1.05 billion to $1 billion, and a separate reserve for dividends and debt eased from $5.04 billion to $5.02 billion.

A small buy by the company's own standards

Strategy has been buying most weeks this year. Last week's purchase was small next to some of them. In the week it reported on 2 September, the company added 4,603 bitcoin, close to three times last week's total, according to figures it disclosed then. Bitcoin traded near $77,200 that day.

Size aside, the method has not changed. Strategy keeps issuing shares and preferred stock, then spends the proceeds on more bitcoin and on managing the securities it has already sold. Critics call it a loop that depends on investors paying more for the stock than the coins behind it are worth. Supporters call it a way to grow bitcoin per share, the same logic that has drawn smaller buyers back into the market this quarter. The filing does not settle that argument.

The latest coins are underwater

Here is the awkward part. Strategy paid $85,681 a coin last week. Bitcoin traded near $83,000 at 15:25 UTC on 29 September, according to CoinGecko. That leaves the newest tranche worth less than the company paid for it. Not by much. The wider position is still far ahead, because most of it was bought at much lower prices.

Some details were missing. The filing did not give a figure for BTC Yield, the company's own measure of how much bitcoin it holds per share. It did not say whether Strategy will keep buying at this pace, or slow down if its stock trades closer to the value of its coins. Neither Saylor nor the company commented beyond the filing.

What to watch

The next signal is the stock. Strategy funds its buying by selling shares at a premium to the bitcoin they represent. If that premium shrinks, raising money gets harder, and the weekly purchases could get smaller still. Watch the size of each buy, and whether the company leans more on cash or debt when equity gets expensive.

One more thing sits in the background. At $63.95 billion spent, the average cost across all of Strategy's coins is now $75,437. A drop below that would put the entire stack in the red on paper, last week's slice included. It has happened before in past cycles. The company held on each time.