Strategy adds 811 bitcoin while STRC buybacks dwarf the purchase

What happened

Strategy acquired 811 bitcoin for roughly $65.5 million in the week ended Nov. 1, paying an average of $80,846 per coin including fees, the company disclosed in a Form 8-K filed Monday. The purchase followed a week in which the firm reported no bitcoin buying at all. Strategy's total holdings now stand at 849,327 BTC, acquired for about $64.08 billion, or an average of $75,451 per coin.

The company did not issue any of its preferred stock to pay for the coins. Instead, it sold 1,178,552 Class A common shares through its at-the-market program, raising $164.0 million after commissions. Of that, $65.5 million went to bitcoin and $98.5 million was moved into USD Cash. Executive Chairman Michael Saylor confirmed the transaction on X, noting both the coin purchase and the repurchase of STRC shares.

Over the same seven days, Strategy spent $208.2 million repurchasing 2,092,035 STRC preferred shares, drawing on its USD Cash balance. That outlay was more than triple what the firm put toward bitcoin during the week. According to Unchained's tally, the two most recent weekly filings show $413.1 million directed to STRC buybacks since Oct. 19, against $65.5 million for bitcoin.

Separately, Strive added 124 BTC between Oct. 24 and Oct. 30 at an average of about $80,526, bringing its stack to 43,124 BTC. The purchase was far smaller than the previous week's, when the Matt Cole-run company bought more than 6,000 coins.

Why it matters

The filings highlight a shift in how Strategy is deploying capital. Much of the year saw the company lean on preferred issuance to fund coin purchases, but with STRC trading below its $100 target, a policy of not selling new preferred below that level has closed off that channel. Bitcoin Magazine reported that the buyback program is being used to tidy up the preferred stack while the company continues adding coins.

For shareholders, the trade-off is visible in the numbers: the company is retiring preferred stock faster than it is accumulating bitcoin, at least on a dollar basis over the past two weeks. Cointelegraph noted that between Oct. 1 and Oct. 25, Strategy repurchased about $664 million of STRC while acquiring roughly $72 million of bitcoin. How long that balance persists may depend on whether STRC recovers to its target price.

What the data shows

Strategy ended the week with $132.7 million in USD Cash, down from $242.4 million a week earlier. Its separate USD Reserve, held to cover preferred dividends and debt interest, stood at $4.79 billion after $43.4 million went to dividend payments; Saylor put total USD assets at $4.9 billion. The board raised the preferred buyback cap to $3 billion last month, and Unchained calculated that $748.6 million of room remains.

STRC traded at $99.22 in premarket action Monday, about 0.8% below its $100 target, according to Yahoo Finance data cited by Cointelegraph. Saylor said in a follow-up post that STRC's BTC Credit tightened to 59 basis points under assumptions that included a bitcoin price of $76,700. Strive's cash position slipped about $14 million to $490 million over its buying window, and it still holds 505,000 STRC shares.

Background

The purchase came days after Strategy reported third-quarter results. Net income reached $19.5 billion, up from $2.79 billion a year earlier, driven by a $20.9 billion operating gain tied to bitcoin's price rise during the quarter, a paper gain under fair-value accounting rather than cash. Saylor described the period as the start of the next bitcoin bull market and pointed to bitcoin trading about 21% above its 200-week moving average. The same release said CFO Andrew Kang will step down Nov. 5, with COO Reza Virasteh taking the role in January. Shareholders also approved, with 99.3% of votes cast in favor, a change letting the STRF, STRC, STRK and STRD preferreds accrue dividends daily, including weekends and holidays, with implementation expected in November 2026 for STRC and January 2027 for the others.

The broader market was unsettled last week. On Oct. 29, Binance disclosed what it now estimates as a $6.3 billion security breach that began with a compromised DevOps laptop; analysts at Chainalysis and TRM Labs have tied it to North Korea's TraderTraitor group. Binance says it has frozen roughly $3 billion of the funds and will cover losses through its SAFU fund and company reserves. Bitcoin fell about 3.6% over the week, MSTR dropped roughly 9% to close Friday at $130.51, and Strive shares were down around 20%. Japan's Metaplanet also reported buying back 96.45 million of its own shares for about 25.27 billion yen, or roughly 7.1% of shares issued.

What to watch

Strategy still has about $18.6 billion available under its MSTR at-the-market program, leaving room for further purchases if market conditions allow. Two things to watch are whether STRC climbs back above $100, which would reopen preferred issuance as a funding route, and whether the pace of buybacks continues now that the program has $748.6 million of capacity left. Strive's next weekly disclosure will show whether it resumes the larger purchases it made earlier in October as it competes for second place among public bitcoin holders.

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