Bitcoin fell to as low as $61,400 overnight before trimming losses to $62,400 in premarket hours Thursday, down 7% over the past 24 hours and more than 14% over the past week. Strategy and Michael Saylor’s MSTR is down nearly 15% in 5 trading days.
The drop has pushed bitcoin into a technical bear market, with bitcoin now off 22.7% from its four-week high, wiping out more than $600 billion in total crypto market value.
Saylor sells some bitcoin
But Saylor’s words arrived with a footnote that bears found hard to ignore. Strategy, the largest corporate bitcoin holder in the world with 843,706 BTC, disclosed in a June 1 Form 8-K that it sold 32 bitcoin between May 26 and May 31 at an average price of $77,135 per coin, raising $2.5 million net of expenses. The stated purpose: to fund dividend payments on the company’s STRC preferred shares.
In dollar terms, the sale is a rounding error against a position worth roughly $61 billion. In psychological terms, the market treated it as a break in character.
Strategy had not sold a single bitcoin since late 2022, and Saylor’s identity as an unwavering bitcoin accumulator had become a market signal in its own right. Analysts said the move deepened bearish sentiment and accelerated the price decline.
Two weeks ago and one week before the sale, Strategy shifted its focus from buying bitcoin to strengthening its balance sheet, repurchasing $1.5 billion of its 0% convertible notes due 2029 for approximately $1.38 billion in cash—an 8% discount that reduced its debt obligations by roughly $120 million.
The move lowered the company’s outstanding convertible debt from $8.2 billion to $6.7 billion while leaving it with an $871 million cash reserve. At the time, Strategy held 843,738 BTC at the time and said it planned to rebuild its liquidity buffer through future capital raises.