Bitcoin He falls to as much as $61,400 overnight before paring losses to $62,400 in pre-market hours on Thursday, down 7% over the past 24 hours and more than 14% over the past week. Michael Saylor’s Strategy and MSTR Index is down approximately 15% in 5 trading days.
This decline has pushed Bitcoin into a technical bear market, with Bitcoin now down 22.7% from its four-week high, wiping out more than $600 billion from the cryptocurrency’s total market cap.
At the center of the debate is Chief Strategy Officer Michael Saylor, who took to X on Thursday morning to provide his take on the sell-off.
“Capital markets are funding AI buildout on a historic scale: ~$400 billion over 6 months,” Saylor books. “Bitcoin ETFs have seen approximately $4 billion in outflows since May 14, putting pressure on Bitcoin. This is a rotation of capital, not a decline in the value of Bitcoin. Volatility creates opportunity.”
Saylor’s thesis is that institutions are taking money out of Bitcoin and redirecting it into AI infrastructure — a trade, not a judgment on the asset. AI spending figures give weight to his argument. Wall Street consensus puts total excessive capital expenditures above $600 billion for 2026 alone, with CreditSights appreciation Nearly $450 billion flows into AI hardware, servers, and networking equipment.
Saylor sells some Bitcoin
But Saylor’s words arrived with a postscript that was difficult for the Bears to ignore. Strategy, the world’s largest Bitcoin holder with 843,706 BTC, It has been detected In a Form 8-K dated June 1, it sold 32 bitcoins between May 26 and May 31 at an average price of $77,135 per coin, raising $2.5 million net of expenses. Stated purpose: to finance dividends on STRC’s preferred stock.
In dollar terms, the sale represents a rounding error for a position worth about $61 billion. Psychologically, the market treated it as a break from personality.
The strategy has not sold a single bitcoin since late 2022, and Saylor’s identity as a consistent Bitcoin accumulator has become a market signal in itself. Analysts said the move deepened bearish sentiment and accelerated price declines.
Two weeks before and one week before the sale, strategy I turned Its focus has shifted from buying bitcoin to strengthening its balance sheet, buying back $1.5 billion of its 0% convertible notes due 2029 for roughly $1.38 billion in cash — an 8% discount that reduced its debt obligations by about $120 million.
The move reduced the company’s convertible debt from $8.2 billion to $6.7 billion while leaving a cash reserve of $871 million. At the time, Strategy held 843,738 BTC at the time and said it planned to rebuild its liquidity reserve through future capital raisings.
