Strategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) purchased 535 bitcoins for approximately $43.0 million at an average price of $80,340 per coin, the company disclosed Monday in a Form 8-K filing. The firm now has 818,869 BTC, acquired for about $61.86 billion at an average price of $75,540 per share. bitcoin, and has recorded a bitcoin yield of 9.4% year-to-date in 2026.
The acquisition was funded through $0.1 million raised through Strategy’s STRC ATM program and $42.9 million from the MSTR ATM offering.
The purchase comes six days after Executive Chairman Michael Saylor told investors on the company’s first-quarter earnings call that Strategy was prepared to sell a portion of its bitcoin holdings for the first time. That statement drew immediate scrutiny from a market that had long viewed the company’s accumulation strategy as one-sided.
Saylor: End each year with more bitcoin than you started
Saylor moved to contain the narrative over the weekend. In a podcast interview, he said that for every bitcoin sold, the company would buy 10 to 20 more. “You should be a net accumulator of bitcoin,” he said. “You will end each year with more bitcoin than you started.” Monday’s buying suggests that the buying has not slowed down.
The backdrop is financial pressure. Bitcoin fell 23% in Q1 2026 – from $87,500 to $67,700 – and under the FASB’s fair value accounting rules adopted in January 2025, the strategy is required to mark its full bitcoin position to market each quarter. In the 1st quarter, it produced an unrealized loss of 12.54 billion dollars, which flows directly through the income statement. More than 434,000 of the company’s coins were purchased above $80,000, generating an unrealized loss of $7.6 billion and a deferred tax asset of $2.2 billion at an effective tax rate of 29%.
It’s the deferred tax asset — not a change in attitude — that explains Saylor’s openness to sales. The same move was made before. On December 22, 2022, Strategy sold 704 BTC at $16,776 per coin and bought back 810 BTC two days later in a tax-loss harvesting maneuver designed to reverse capital losses against previous gains. The structure is now larger, but the logic is identical.
CEO Phong Le put the decision framework on record during the earnings call. “I believe in mathematics over ideology,” Le said. “At the point when it is better for our bitcoin-per-share to sell bitcoin versus selling equity to pay dividends, and for our common shareholders, we will do that.”
The company carries $8.2 billion in convertible debt and owes $1.5 billion annually in dividend obligations tied to its perpetual preferred stock, STRC. Both create real cash requirements, which share issues alone do not always cover on favorable terms.
Bitcoin per share – the ratio of total BTC holdings to diluted shares outstanding – remains the metric every funding decision runs through. JPMorgan analysts wrote last week that if the strategy maintains its current pace, total bitcoin purchases by 2026 could reach approximately $30 billion.
The strategy’s bitcoin and software business
The company’s software division, long treated as background noise, is gaining attention. Le said Q1 2026 was the strongest quarter in a decade, with revenue up 12%. Strategy has built an internal AI infrastructure layer called “Mosaic” and is rebuilding core workflows using multiple AI models. “I am sometimes asked why a bitcoin tax company should also run a software business,” Le wrote on Sunday, X. “The two create powerful and unique synergies.”
MSTR stock closed Friday up 4.31% at $187.59. The stock is up 41.7% over the past month, although it has continued to decline 18.9% over the past six months. In the pre-market on Monday, shares rose around 1 per cent. Bitcoin was trading around $81,000.
On Sunday night, Saylor posted two words to X: “Back to work. BTC.” He has made similar posts before previous purchase announcements. Monday’s filing confirmed the pattern.