Twelve months ago, Strategy traded above $450 a share and Michael Saylor's bitcoin flywheel looked unstoppable. Today MSTR changes hands near $95 — down 42.8% in the first half of 2026 and roughly 80% below its peak, according to The Motley Fool. The claim that shareholders are shrugging off the slide does not survive contact with the numbers. Bitcoin is trading near $64,000, below the company's average purchase price of $75,476 per coin, and Strategy has started doing the one thing its chairman long insisted it never would: selling bitcoin.
The Drawdown by the Numbers
Strategy's 52-week range tells the story in a single line: a high of $454.33 against a low of $81.81. When bitcoin traded above $100,000, the company's market capitalization topped $100 billion. That premium has evaporated as bitcoin retreated — from roughly $74,000 in late May to below $58,000 within a week, before stabilizing in the low-to-mid $60,000s by mid-July.
The damage shows up directly on the balance sheet. CoinDesk reported that Strategy booked an unrealized loss of $8.31 billion for the second quarter as bitcoin slid from about $68,000 on April 1 to roughly $60,000 by the end of June. The company still holds 843,775 BTC — the largest corporate treasury in the world, ahead of BlackRock's IBIT at 733,516 BTC — but with an average cost basis of $75,476, the entire stack is underwater at current prices.
The Sales That Broke the "Never Sell" Rule
The defining shift of 2026 is that Strategy stopped only buying. Between June 29 and July 5, the company sold 3,588 BTC for approximately $216 million — its largest bitcoin sale since a small tax-related transaction in 2022. The proceeds were not deployed into a market-timing trade. They went to fund dividends on the company's preferred "digital credit" securities and to top up a US dollar reserve.
The churn has left the treasury essentially flat. CoinDesk noted that after a series of buys and sales over recent weeks, Strategy ended up with a net increase of only 69 bitcoin — and because it sold coins at lower prices and repurchased at higher ones, the implied cost of those incremental holdings works out to more than $289,000 per BTC.
The selling did not stop with bitcoin. According to an SEC filing covering July 6 through July 12, Strategy sold 4.8 million MSTR shares for $466.7 million while leaving its bitcoin holdings unchanged. CoinGape reports the equity sales are part of an effort to build the company's dollar reserve toward $3 billion — a cushion preferred shareholders reportedly asked for.
Preferred Dividends Are the Pressure Point
Strategy's real vulnerability is not the bitcoin price alone. It is the fixed cash bill attached to the preferred securities the company issued to buy bitcoin in the first place. Those obligations do not shrink when the market falls. Bitcoin Magazine reported in June that annual dividend obligations had quadrupled from about $300 million at the start of 2026 to roughly $1.2 billion, while the company's cash reserves had fallen 38% over six months.
The flagship preferred, STRC — nicknamed "Stretch" — now carries a 12% annual dividend after a recent 50-basis-point increase, and it traded around $87 in mid-July against a $100 par value. The company says its cash reserve currently covers more than 17 months of dividend payments.
President and CEO Phong Le has tied any resumption of bitcoin buying to that security's recovery. "We'll continue to build that. And yeah, when Stretch gets back to par, we'll issue more. We'll buy more Bitcoin," Le said in a Bloomberg interview. He acknowledged he could not say when STRC would return to $100 — which means the accumulation machine is paused indefinitely.
Are Investors Really Unfazed?
The evidence cuts both ways, and mostly against the sanguine reading. On the supportive side, preferred holders responded well to the dividend increase: STRC rose 2.1% to nearly $90 in early July even as the common stock fell, suggesting income-focused buyers still trust the payout. Le has also pitched the preferreds as leveraged bitcoin exposure, with STRC offering roughly 3.6 times the bitcoin exposure of IBIT per dollar invested.
Common shareholders have had a rougher ride. During June's washout, MSTR fell nearly 30% in five days, touching $85 — its lowest level since March 2024 — while bitcoin briefly broke below $60,000. The stock's premium to the net value of its bitcoin has compressed toward 1x, which removes the financial logic behind issuing new shares to buy more coins. The stock has also decoupled from bitcoin on individual days, falling even when BTC gains. Adding to the pressure, Rosen Law Firm has announced an investigation into whether Strategy issued materially misleading business information; Saylor has not commented publicly on it.
What to Watch From Here
- STRC versus par: Le has made $100 on the preferred the explicit trigger for resuming bitcoin purchases. Until then, expect stock sales and cash conservation.
- Bitcoin versus $75,476: Strategy's average cost basis is the line between an underwater treasury and a recovering one.
- Dividend coverage: The reserve currently covers 17-plus months of payouts; watch weekly disclosures for whether that number grows toward the $3 billion target or erodes.
- Further BTC sales: The July sale was framed as one-off funding, but The Motley Fool warns the company may be forced to sell more if bitcoin stays depressed.
Strategy remains the largest corporate bitcoin holder by a wide margin, and roughly $54 billion in BTC is not a trivial asset base against $22.2 billion in total liabilities. But the second half of 2026 will test something the first five years of Saylor's experiment never did: whether a company engineered to convert equity premium into bitcoin can run in reverse — selling stock and coins to pay fixed dividends — without the model coming apart. Investors are watching closely. Unfazed is not the word.