strategy recently It made headlines By saying that she may sell some bitcoins to achieve business goals. This came as a surprise to many people due to what was previously seen as a hardline stance of never selling. Saylor even (jokingly) tweeted things like “sell a kidney if you have to, but keep the bitcoin.”
The truth is that bitcoin sales have always been on the table for any bitcoin treasury company. The phrase “never sell” is an expression of a long-term investment philosophy built on the extreme preference for low time that is common in Bitcoin discourse. But even within this discourse, there are often cases where almost everyone agrees that it makes sense to sell, despite the ubiquity of the HODL meme.
The simplest reasons include improving one’s quality of life: buying a home to raise a family, paying for a trip somewhere you want to go, sending your kids to college, and extreme and unexpected medical bills. The list is very long and HODLing is often not that long.
For a company, the reason for doing anything (and indeed the reason for the company’s existence) is to improve shareholder value.
Consider another group of Bitcoin companies that have been selling. our First quarter report It highlights that Bitcoin miners sold 25,376 Bitcoin in the first quarter of 2026 to fund AI hubs. The math of value creation is simple. Management believes their AI capex will deliver better risk-adjusted gains than the Bitcoin they sold. Under these assumptions, it makes sense that they sold Bitcoin to fund AI. In fact, here’s reason 0: If there’s a better investment than Bitcoin, selling Bitcoin for it makes perfect sense.
For Strategy – and all treasury firms focused on raising capital to accumulate bitcoin – there are clear cases where selling can create value. Let’s go through some of them.
Reason 1: Bitcoin per share
Increasing Bitcoin per share (BPS) is the goal of most treasury strategies. The growth during the period in BPS is called BTC Yield. Bitcoin yield is typically achieved when Bitcoin is purchased, which increases the numerator of the BPS ratio. However, this can also be achieved when purchasing stocks, which reduces the denominator in the BPS ratio.
If a stock trades at a discount to the Bitcoin it represents, selling Bitcoin to buy back the stock almost always results in an increase in BPS. This is because the percentage change in Bitcoin holdings is still greater than the percentage change in outstanding shares.
The discount rule also applies in the case of continuing liabilities (such as preferred stock dividends or debt coupons) that cannot be financed with operating cash flow. If the stock is trading at a discount, it is better to sell Bitcoin to pay off these liabilities. This would result in a smaller decrease in BPS.
Reason 2: Cost of capital and capital appreciation
Because rating agencies have significant influence over how capital markets allocate funds, their rules and guidelines must be respected for greater ease in the capital formation process. In December we are Published a report on Strategy’s S&P historical credit ratings. In it, we discussed the different options available to companies to obtain better credit ratings, which would ultimately help their credit instruments have a lower cost of capital.
The cash reserve option, found in S&P comments and discussed in our report, was immediately adopted by the strategy. By January 2026, the strategy had approximately $2.2 billion in cash reserves, and this significantly reduced investors’ concerns about not being able to cover preferred dividends.
In this scenario, it is perfectly acceptable for the company to sell some Bitcoin to create a cash reserve to satisfy the market so that it can sell its credit instruments at lower costs of capital. This may seem complicated, but in the end you have to meet your creditors where they are to get them to give you their money. There is no way to overcome it.
Another corollary to this is Bitcoin sales to pay off debt. Debt is a major liability that reduces the attractiveness of preferred stock as credit instruments. If these shares can be retired, preferred shares could see a better cost of capital.
Over the long term, a better cost of capital can be of great value due to its compounding and the ability to service liabilities on more capital. For example, it’s easier to double if you pay 9% versus 11.5% — an extra 250 basis points makes a big difference over time. You pay less for $1 billion borrowed at 7% than you pay for $700 billion borrowed at 11%.
Reason 3: Taxes
Bitcoin does not have a wash sale rule in the USA (at the time of writing). You can sell it for a loss and then buy it immediately and reset the cost basis to a lower level. This allows you to book the loss, which serves as a tax asset. In fact, the strategy actually did exactly that in December 2022 at the bottom of the previous cycle.
Today this tax advantage still exists, so it’s another good reason to sell Bitcoin. However, many may not consider it a sale if the company buys back immediately. But a company can easily combine the tax benefit of a realized loss with an action such as a stock buyback or debt repayment.
Reason 4: Prove it’s possible
Bitcoin is still quite new and this comes with a lot of FUD. Sometimes FUD is ridiculous but it still spreads. The strategy of selling Bitcoin is one example of a ridiculous FUD: the idea is that they are backing the entire Bitcoin market, or that if they sold the entire Bitcoin balance sheet model it would be immediately exposed. Therefore, if they can sell 50,000 bitcoins and prove that nothing serious has happened to the bitcoin or stock market, this could dispel such notions and make the market more receptive to the corporate bitcoin balance sheet model.
Anyway, this would be the most ridiculous reason to do it, but sometimes people come up with ridiculous ideas that you just need to prove wrong. And one final point on this – the market in general is very efficient; It is the media and influencers who are incentivized to push sensationalized and poorly reasoned narratives out of whatever they can find. Real money distributors rarely make decisions based on these “sources” rather than actual research.
Reason 5: Preferred repurchase
This is something people don’t talk about at all. But if the variable rate instruments are effectively unlinked, the company has the option to buy back the instrument at a significant discount to the face value, thus withdrawing liabilities with very high capital costs.
This essentially closes out a tax-free, leverage-free short position on the company’s preferred stock. STRC for example is issued at $100. If the stock falls to $82 and the strategy sells $1 billion of BTC to buy back STRC at $82 per share, it makes a profit of $100 – 82 = $18 for each STRC share sold short (source) and then bought back. This gain is not taxable, and the strategy did not have to borrow shares to do this short.
STRC price action since its IPO
Another important thing to note is that such a de-linking need not be accompanied by a collapse in the price of Bitcoin. If traders rely too heavily on STRC (which is certainly possible given what this stock has to offer), a decline could trigger stop losses and momentum algorithms that cause a series of sell-offs. In this case, Strategy could sell BTC to retire some STRC shares before assuming a higher dividend (here I assume they would increase the dividend to bring the shares back to par).
conclusion
Don’t be surprised or scared by Bitcoin sales. There are many cases where it is in the best interest of the company and shareholders to do so.
Bitcoin is money. Money creates optionality. Options are great when used well.
