Michael Saylor Suspends Bitcoin Purchases. Another company spends over half a billion dollars on BTC | Bitcoin.pl

Strategy, a company associated with Michael Saylor, decided to stop the accumulation after five weeks of continuous Bitcoin purchases. Instead of further investments in BTC, it allocated almost USD 205 million to repurchase its own preferred shares. At the same time, competitor Strive purchased 6,182 BTC for over USD 511 million, increasing its reserves to USD 43,000. bitcoins. Both decisions show how different financing strategies are adopted by companies building their balance sheets around the largest cryptocurrency.

The company’s total reserves remained at 848,517 BTC, equivalent to approximately 4.04% of Bitcoin’s maximum supply of 21 million coins. Strategy spent USD 64.02 billion on their purchase, paying an average of USD 75,446 per bitcoin, including fees and transaction costs. The scale of these investments means that the company remains by far the largest holder of BTC among listed companies.

The pause in purchases, however, does not mean that Michael Saylor has changed his long-term approach to Bitcoin. There is no declaration of the end of the accumulation in official documents, and the company still holds all the coins collected so far. Rather, the latest report shows that managing such large reserves now requires making decisions regarding not only the purchase of cryptocurrencies, but also the financing structure of the entire enterprise.

The most important information from Strategy’s latest report is the allocation of USD 204.9 million for the repurchase of 2,068,459 STRC preferred shares, known as Stretch. These are not ordinary MSTR shares that investors buy on the stock exchange to gain exposure to the company’s business. STRC is a separate financial instrument whose holders may receive regular cash dividends.

Strategy uses such securities to raise capital, reducing the need to finance all investments through the issuance of common shares. STRC’s October effective annual dividend rate is 12%, calculated on a par value of $100 per share. However, this rate may change, and payments depend on the decision of the relevant company authorities and the fulfillment of appropriate conditions.

Repurchasing its own preferred shares can be beneficial to the issuer because it reduces the number of securities on which future dividends are calculated. In the case of Strategy’s latest transaction, assuming the annual rate remains at 12%, the potential drawdown cap could be approximately $24.8 million per year. This is an illustrative calculation based on the number of shares purchased, and not a savings forecast presented by the company.

At the end of October 25, Strategy also had a dollar reserve intended for servicing financial liabilities in the amount of USD 4.83 billion and an additional USD 242.4 million in funds referred to as USD Cash. It was from this second pool that the last repurchase of STRC was financed. The distinction is important because the funds held in the dollar reserve are primarily used to secure dividend and interest payments, rather than current purchases of preferred stock.

As a result, Strive’s reserves increased from 36,818 to 43,000 BTC. This means increasing your resources by nearly 17% in just a week. The company led by Matt Cole has thus strengthened its position among the largest stock exchange holders of Bitcoin, getting closer to the Japanese Metaplanet and Twenty One.

Source: company documents and Bitcoin Treasuries list quoted by The Block, October 26, 2026. The ranking may change with subsequent purchases.

The distance to the leader remains huge. Strategy has almost twenty times more BTC than Strive, and its position results from many years of accumulation and a much larger scale of capital raising. However, Strive’s ambition is not to immediately catch up with Saylor’s company. Matt Cole previously declared that he would like to end the year in second place among stock exchange holders of Bitcoin. With current resources, Strive is only about a thousand BTC short of Metaplanet, although achieving the goal will also depend on purchases made by other market participants.

Such large cryptocurrency purchases require appropriate financing. In the case of Strive, an important role is played by the issuance of securities, which allows the company to raise capital from investors instead of basing its strategy solely on funds generated in its core business.

On October 20, the company completed an offering of 7 million shares of SATS preferred stock, sold for $90 each. In this way, it raised approximately USD 630 million before deducting the issue costs. SATS is an instrument with an initial annual dividend rate of 15% of the nominal value, or $15 per share of $100 par. This means significant financial obligations on the issuer’s side, although dividend payments are subject to the conditions set out in the documentation.

The cost of this financing is also important. SATS shares offered at USD 90, with an annual dividend of USD 15 on the nominal value, correspond to an initial dividend yield of approximately 16.7% on the issue price, assuming distributions in accordance with the terms of the instrument. This is an attractive nominal rate for the buyer, but at the same time a high cost of capital for Strive. The company has secured a reserve corresponding to the first 18 months of payments, but this does not eliminate the long-term risk associated with servicing these instruments.

Against this background, one more detail is particularly interesting. Strive’s report shows that the company also has 505,000. STRC shares issued by Strategy, valued at approximately USD 50.2 million. This means that although both companies compete for a position in the ranking of the largest BTC holders, Strive is also an investor in a financial instrument issued by Saylor’s company. However, there is no basis to identify the STRC shares held by Strive with the package purchased by Strategy in recent days.

The activities of Strategy and Strive show how quickly the business model of companies with large Bitcoin reserves is changing. Just a few years ago, the mere announcement of the purchase of a cryptocurrency by a listed company was an event that attracted the attention of investors. Today, how such purchases are financed and whether their implementation actually increases shareholder value is becoming increasingly important.

The issuance of new ordinary shares may lead to dilution of the shares of existing investors. In turn, preferred shares, especially those offering high dividends, generate costs that the company must take into account when managing liquidity. In either case, an increasing number of bitcoins on the balance sheet does not automatically mean a proportional increase in the value of each share.

A good example is Strive, whose number of effective common shares increased from approximately 124.1 million to 127.3 million between October 16 and October 23. That’s an increase of about 2.6% in a week. At the same time, BTC reserves increased by almost 17%. Although such a summary looks favorable, it is not sufficient to evaluate the entire investment, because other assets, liabilities and preferential claims to the company’s capital must also be taken into account.

An investor analyzing similar companies should therefore check not only the total number of BTCs, but also the amount of bitcoins per share, the amount of liabilities, the terms of the issuance of securities and the ratio of the company’s stock exchange valuation to the value of its net assets. Buying Strategy or Strive shares is not the same as purchasing Bitcoin directly. In addition to the BTC exchange rate risk, the investor takes on the risk related to the management of a specific company and its financial structure.

Strategy’s one-week suspension of purchases is not in itself a signal that the company expects further declines in the price of Bitcoin. The company has not sold any BTC, has not announced the abandonment of its accumulation strategy and still holds over 848,000. coins. At the same time, Strive’s purchases show that at least some companies continue to use the acquired capital to increase their exposure to the cryptocurrency.

However, even such large transactions should not be equated with a forecast of the future behavior of the entire market. The decisions of companies holding BTC depend on many factors, including the availability of financing, the prices of their own securities, the level of liabilities and the adopted capital management model. What is a reasonable financial decision from the perspective of one company may not be an appropriate strategy for another market participant.

The coming weeks will show whether Strategy will return to regular purchases and whether Strive will use the new SATS issuance program to further increase its reserves. It will also be particularly interesting to see how both companies will cope with financing liabilities in the environment of increased BTC exchange rate volatility.

The result of this comparison does not depend solely on who buys more bitcoins. The question is becoming more and more important which company can increase shareholder value without excessively increasing financing costs and liquidity risk. Today’s decisions by Strategy and Strive show that this aspect may play an increasingly important role in the corporate BTC reserves market.