Strategy's 32 BTC Sale: Did the 'Inoculation' Backfire?

Bitcoin is off to a shaky start in June, dropping roughly 10% from $74,000 to $65,400 as headwinds pile up. The market's attention, however, remains firmly fixated on Strategy's first BTC sale since 2022. The Bitcoin treasury firm revealed in an 8-K filing Monday that it had sold 32 BTC the previous week, sparking heated debate on crypto Twitter.

Per the SEC filing, Strategy sold 32 BTC from its holdings last week for roughly $2.5 million. The average sale price was $77,135 per Bitcoin, bringing Strategy's holdings down to 843,706 BTC—worth approximately $61 billion at current prices. Funds from the sale will be used to cover distributions on preferred stock, the firm said in the filing.

As the opening bell rang on Monday, Strategy's stock price plunged. Shares in the Bitcoin-buying firm fell more than 8.5% that day, and the move marked a reversal of Strategy's long-held "Never sell your Bitcoin" stance. The company's chair, Michael Saylor, had laid the groundwork last month, noting on an earnings call that "we will probably sell some Bitcoin to pay a dividend just to inoculate the market and send the message that we did it." Inoculation, it turns out, works better in theory.

Bitcoin dropped sharply on the news before slipping to lows under $66,000 as headwinds mounted, pushing liquidations of leveraged positions in the crypto market to $1.76 billion on June 2, per CoinGlass data.

Skeptics argue the move signaled structural distress in how Strategy plans to service its dividend obligations, fracturing the long-standing "never sell" narrative tied to its Bitcoin acquisition strategy. It boils down to a few key recent moves: Strategy's sale of 32 BTC and Saylor's decision to use the company's $1.38 billion in cash reserves to retire $1.5 billion of its 2029 convertible bonds. Around the same multi-week window, Strategy purchased 24,869 BTC using the proceeds from its $2 billion STRC offering, effectively draining its corporate cash reserves—a sequence critics have painted as a tactical misstep, coming right before an expensive monthly dividend payout to STRC holders.

"It's tragicomic how bad Saylor's recent moves have been," crypto economist Alex Kruger tweeted Tuesday. "He tried to save STRC by signaling willingness to sell Bitcoin, and cratered it all in the process." Kruger added that Strategy was "cornered" and that Saylor "Should have sold size if he was going to sell." Kruger's full quote, for the record: "Both buying back the converts and the 32BTC sell. He tried to save STRC by signaling willingness to sell BTC, and cratered it all in the process. And he's still cornered. Should have sold size if he was going to sell."

Beyond the broader crypto cascade, STRC—the company's preferred perpetual stock—dropped from its $100 par value to $94.84, where it currently trades. Strategy's common stock, MSTR, fell 9.6% from Monday's open to $134, slipping another 4% on Wednesday to $130, per Yahoo! Finance.

STRC's depegging "signals a structural crack in MSTR's leverage-heavy Bitcoin flywheel," Ryan Yoon, senior analyst at Tiger Research, told Decrypt. "Burdened by massive dividend obligations, hedge funds feared Michael Saylor might be forced to liquidate some Bitcoin to service debt. This shattered the 'never sell' narrative, putting immediate downward pressure on Bitcoin."

Not everyone views the situation as a structural failure. Andri Fauzan Adziima, research lead at Bitrue Research Institute, told Decrypt that Saylor's actions were fundamentally sound balance-sheet decisions that were simply poorly timed during a macro-sensitive market dip. Adziima argued that STRC's decoupling to the $95–97 level "increases the cost of preferred funding, compresses the mNAV premium, and slows the Bitcoin yield engine," adding that the dynamic pushes the company toward further equity issuance or potential Bitcoin sales to cover dividends.