Strategy Adds 250 Bitcoin to Record Hoard, Buys Back $192M in Preferred Stock

Strategy, the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, added 250 coins last week at an average price of $86,194, pushing its total holdings to 848,250 BTC — a new record for any public company. The $21.5 million purchase, executed between Oct. 5 and Oct. 11, brings the firm’s cumulative acquisition cost to roughly $64 billion at an average of $75,444 per coin, according to a Monday filing.

The Treasury operation was funded almost entirely through the company’s at-the-market equity program. Strategy sold approximately 125,000 shares of its MSTR common stock to raise $21 million, supplementing the remainder with $500,000 in cash. No preferred shares were sold during the period.

At the same time, the company continued its preferred-stock repurchase program, retiring 1,932,145 shares of its variable-rate STRC series for $192.4 million. That leaves $354.8 million of authorization remaining under the buyback plan.

The dual moves — accumulating Bitcoin while shrinking the preferred float — illustrate Strategy’s evolving capital structure. As of Oct. 11, the company held $4.88 billion in a dedicated U.S. dollar reserve earmarked for preferred dividends and debt service, plus an additional $640.5 million in unrestricted cash available for general corporate purposes, including further Bitcoin purchases. The reserve was initially seeded with $1.44 billion and later bolstered after a $2 billion common-stock raise.

Last week’s activity follows a pattern established in late September, when Strategy disclosed a $29 million Bitcoin buy alongside $176 million of STRC repurchases — the same week it reported a $21 billion third-quarter gain driven largely by the appreciation of its digital-asset holdings. Chief Executive Phong Le had defended the firm’s occasional Bitcoin sales as the “right trade” earlier in September, weeks before the company set its previous holdings record with a $143 million purchase.

Strategy’s balance-sheet strategy has drawn scrutiny from both traditional analysts and crypto-native observers. The company has proposed amending its preferred terms so dividends accrue 365 days a year rather than on a business-day convention, and it has disclosed a “digital credit capital framework” that could permit sales of up to $1.25 billion worth of Bitcoin under certain conditions.

Prediction markets remain skeptical that Strategy will cross the 1 million BTC threshold this year. Myriad, a platform owned by Dastan (parent of Decrypt), assigns only a 5% probability to that outcome by Dec. 31. The firm would need to acquire roughly 152,000 additional coins in less than three months — a pace far exceeding its recent weekly run rate.

Bitcoin traded near $82,950 on Monday, down 3.4% over the prior 24 hours, with 24-hour volume of about $967 million.