Michael Saylor's bitcoin machine keeps running - Strategy just added another $1 billion worth of bitcoin to its pile without spending a single dollar of cash.
The company bought 13,927 bitcoin at an average price of $71,902 per coin, bringing total holdings to 780,897 BTC - more than any other public company in the world by a wide margin. The next closest corporate holder, Marathon Digital, owns less than 50,000 coins.
Strategy sold more than 10 million shares of STRC - its Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock - between April 6 and April 12, raising $1.001 billion that went straight into bitcoin.
This is the playbook. Issue new securities, use the money to buy bitcoin, repeat. The total investment now sits at about $59 billion, with an average cost of $75,577 per coin.
Strategy has issued multiple rounds of preferred stock, convertible notes, and at-the-market equity offerings since it started buying bitcoin in 2020. The company has bought bitcoin in every quarter for over five years straight, making it the longest-running corporate buyer in the market and turning a once-small software company into a de facto bitcoin holding vehicle.
Saylor pointed to the company's 5.6% "BTC Yield" for 2026 so far - a metric Strategy invented to track the growth of bitcoin per diluted share of stock.
With bitcoin trading around $71,000 to $72,000, Strategy's average cost of $75,577 means the company is sitting on an unrealized loss on its total position right now. At current prices, the 780,897 coins are worth roughly $55 billion to $56 billion against $59 billion in total cost - a paper loss of about $3 billion to $4 billion.
Under new FASB accounting rules that took effect in 2025, companies can now mark bitcoin holdings to market value on their balance sheets. That means Strategy's quarterly earnings will swing with bitcoin's price - reporting gains when bitcoin rises and losses when it falls, adding volatility to an already volatile stock.
Every time Strategy issues new shares to buy bitcoin, existing shareholders own a smaller slice of the company. The STRC preferred stock sits above common shares in the capital structure - a hierarchy that determines who gets paid first - meaning preferred holders get paid before common stock investors if anything goes wrong.
For common stock investors, the trade only works if bitcoin goes up enough to offset the dilution. If bitcoin recovers above $76,000, the total position turns profitable and the new shares were worth it.
If it stays below $75,000, shareholders are paying for someone else's bitcoin bet through diluted ownership.
Strategy's stock moves with bitcoin - when bitcoin rises, the stock tends to rise even faster due to leverage, and when bitcoin falls, the stock falls harder. If bitcoin recovers past the company's average cost, the trade works.
If it drops further, the preferred stock dilution weighs on shareholders without bitcoin gains to offset it. The STRC model only holds up as long as investors keep buying the preferred shares - and that demand depends entirely on faith in bitcoin's long-term direction.
