Recently Strategy made headlines by saying that it might sell some bitcoin to meet business objectives. This came as a surprise to many people because of what was previously regarded as a hard-lined stance to never sell. Saylor even (jokingly) tweeted stuff like “Sell a kidney if you must, but keep the bitcoin.”
The reality is that bitcoin sales were always on the table for any bitcoin treasury company. The quip of “never sell” is an articulation of a long-term investment philosophy founded upon the extreme low time preference that is common in bitcoin discourse. But even within this discourse, there are frequently cases where almost everyone agrees it makes sense to sell, despite the ubiquity of the HODL meme.
The simplest reasons involve improving one’s quality of life: buying a house to raise a family, paying for a trip to a place you’ve wanted to go, sending your kids to college, unexpected and severe medical bills. The list is very long. HODLing often isn’t as long.
For a company, the reason to do anything (and indeed the reason for a company’s existence) is to improve shareholder value.
Consider another group of bitcoin companies that have been selling. Our Q1 Report highlights that Bitcoin miners have sold 25,376 BTC in Q1 2026 to fund AI pivots. The value creation math is simple. Management believes that their AI capex will yield better risk-adjusted gains than the bitcoin they sold. Under these assumptions, it makes sense that they sold bitcoin to fund AI. In fact, this is reason 0: if there is a better investment than bitcoin, then selling bitcoin for that makes complete sense.
For Strategy—and all treasury companies that are focused on raising capital to accumulate bitcoin—there are clear cases where selling can create value. Let’s go through some of them.
Reason 1: Bitcoin per share
Growing Bitcoin per share (BPS) is the goal of most treasury strategies. A period over period growth in BPS is called BTC Yield. BTC Yield is normally achieved when bitcoin is purchased, which increases the numerator in the BPS ratio. However, it can also be achieved when shares are purchased, which decreases the denominator in the BPS ratio.
If shares trade at a discount to the bitcoin they represent, then selling bitcoin to buy back stock always leads to an increase in BPS. This is because the percent change in bitcoin holdings is still greater than the percent change in shares outstanding.
The discount rule also applies in the case of ongoing obligations (such as preferred stock dividends or debt coupons) that cannot be funded with operating cash flow. If shares trade at a discount, then it is better to sell bitcoin to pay these obligations. This would lead to a smaller decrease in BPS.
Reason 2: Cost of capital and raising capital
Because ratings agencies have much sway over how capital markets allocate funds, their rules and guidelines need to be respected for greater ease in the capital formation process. In December we published a report on Strategy’s historic S&P credit ratings. In it we discussed the different options for companies to receive better credit ratings, which would ultimately help their credit instruments obtain a lower cost of capital.
The cash reserve option, which was found in S&P’s comments and discussed in our report, was promptly adopted by Strategy. By January 2026, Strategy had about a $2.2 billion cash reserve, and this has meaningfully reduced investors’ fears of an inability to cover preferred dividends.
In this scenario, it is perfectly okay for a company to sell some bitcoin to create the cash reserve to appease the market so that it can sell its credit instruments at lower costs of capital. This seems convoluted, but ultimately you have to meet your creditors where they are at to get them to give you their money. There is no way around it.
Another corollary to that is bitcoin sales to retire debt. Debts are senior liabilities which reduce the attractiveness of preferred stock as credit instruments. If these can be retired, then preferred stocks could see a better cost of capital.
In the long term, a better cost of capital could be worth a lot due to compounding and being able to service liabilities on more capital. For instance, it’s easier to compound if you pay 9% vs 11.5% — an extra 250 bps makes a very big difference over time. And you pay less for $1 billion borrowed at 7% than you do for $700 billion borrowed at 11%.
Reason 3: Tax
Bitcoin does not have a wash sale rule in the USA (at the time of writing). You can sell it to realize a loss and then immediately buy it and reset the cost basis lower. This lets you book a loss, which serves as a tax asset. In fact, Strategy actually did this exact thing back in December 2022 at the prior cycle’s bottom.
Today this tax benefit still exists, so it is another very good reason to sell bitcoin. However, many might not see it as selling if the company immediately repurchases. But a company can easily combine the tax advantage of a realized loss with an action like a share buyback or debt repayment.
Reason 4: Proving it is possible
Bitcoin is still quite new and this comes with a lot of FUD. Sometimes the FUD is just ridiculous but it still catches on. Strategy selling bitcoin is one such instance of ridiculous FUD: the idea is that they are propping up the whole bitcoin market, or that if they sell the entire bitcoin balance sheet model is instantly debunked. Therefore, if they can sell 50,000 BTC and prove that nothing serious happens to the bitcoin market nor the stock, then this can dispel such notions and make the market more receptive toward the corporate bitcoin balance sheet model.
At any rate, this would be the silliest reason to do it, but sometimes people come up with silly ideas that just need to be proven wrong. And one last point on this — the market is generally quite efficient; it is the media outlets and influencers that are incentivized to push sensationalist and poorly reasoned narrative out of whatever they can find. Real allocators with money rarely make decisions based on these “sources” over actual research.
Reason 5: Preferred buyback
This is something people don’t really talk about at all. But in the event of a real de-peg of variable rate instruments, the company has the option to buy back the instrument at a heavy discount to par, thus retiring obligations with very high costs of capital.
This is basically closing a winning tax-free and borrow-free short position on the company’s own preferred stock. STRC for example is issued at $100. If the stock drops to $82 and Strategy sells a billion dollars of BTC to buy back STRC at $82 per share, then it basically pocketed a gain of 100 – 82 = $18 per STRC share shorted (issued) and then repurchased. And this gain isn’t taxable, nor did Strategy have to borrow the shares to do this short.
STRC price action since IPO
The other important thing to note is that such a de-peg does not have to accompany a crash in the bitcoin price. If traders are heavily levered up on STRC (which is certainly possible given what this stock offers), a wick down can lead to stop losses and momentum algos that cause a cascade of selling. In this case, Strategy can sell BTC to retire some STRC shares before enduring a higher dividend (here I assume they would increase the dividend to get the shares back to par).
Conclusion
Don’t be surprised or scared about bitcoin sales. There are plenty of cases where it is in the interest of the company and shareholders to do so.
Bitcoin is money. Money creates optionality. Options are great when used well.