Strategy Flips BlackRock's IBIT, Reclaims Bitcoin Throne CATEGORY: Industry News

Strategy (MSTR) has taken back the crown from BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) in bitcoin holdings for the first time since Q2 2024, according to recent filings. The world's largest publicly traded $BTC bag holder announced its third-largest bitcoin purchase on record, scooping up 34,164 $BTC and pushing its total stash to 815,061 $BTC. IBIT sits at 802,824 $BTC, giving Strategy a lead of more than 12,000 coins. The gap isn't exactly Warren Buffett's margin of safety, but symbolically it's a big deal—especially considering IBIT's meteoric rise since its debut.

IBIT became the fastest ETF in history to hit $70 billion in assets and has quietly become one of BlackRock's top revenue-generating products. Strategy was holding 189,150 $BTC at the start of Q1 2024. IBIT zoomed past it by early Q2 with roughly 273,000 $BTC versus Strategy's 214,400 $BTC—a lead it held consistently until this very moment. But these two are fighting in completely different weight classes. Strategy is an operating company that uses financial engineering wizardry, including at-the-market (ATM) equity issuance, convertible debt, and perpetual preferred securities, to stack bitcoin in a leveraged fashion. IBIT, by contrast, is a spot ETF designed to passively track bitcoin's price, offering investors clean exposure without leverage or corporate balance sheet shenanigans.

The performance gap tells the whole story. IBIT has gained around 55% since listing in January 2024, while Strategy has surged roughly 250%, powered by its leveraged setup. Notably, Strategy doubled down on accumulation during the recent market downturn as bitcoin shed over 50% from its October all-time high, adding nearly 80,000 $BTC in 2026. The perpetual preferred equity STRC has been Strategy's secret sauce, providing a scalable capital source that funded a massive chunk of its recent bitcoin accumulation. Meanwhile, IBIT's holdings remained relatively stable, with only a modest decline in assets under management.