Strategy halts bitcoin buys again, spends $205m buying back its own preferred stock
Strategy bought no bitcoin in the week of 19 to 25 October, the company said, and instead spent $204.9 million repurchasing its STRC preferred stock. The firm still holds 848,517 BTC, acquired for $64.02 billion at an average of $75,446 per coin, and kept a $4.83 billion cash reserve to cover preferred dividends and debt interest.
The buyback is a bet on the preferred's price rather than on the coin. STRC carries a variable dividend and is designed to trade near its $100 face value; with the shares trading below that in recent market swings, retiring $100 of stated value for $86.52 shrinks the preferred claim by more than the cash spent, lifting net bitcoin per share.
It is not the first pause. Strategy has halted purchases several times this year and redirected money to preferred buybacks, including a $176 million STRC repurchase in September, when it doubled its digital credit securities repurchase programme from $1 billion to $2 billion. The company built the largest corporate bitcoin treasury in the world through stock sales and convertible debt, but its funding mix has shifted toward common stock sales this year.
Bitcoin traded near $80,000 on Monday, 26 October, after a weekend selloff pushed it into the low $79,000s, a level not seen in more than a month. Against the $75,446 average cost, Strategy's holdings show a paper gain of around $3.9 billion. The company has given no timetable for resuming bitcoin purchases.
