Unchained - Why Strategy Dumped Its Biggest Bitcoin Tranche Yet

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

For years, Michael Saylor's Strategy was the market's most dependable Bitcoin buyer. Recently, it has done the opposite. Strategy just sold 3,588 Bitcoin for roughly $216 million, its largest single tranche yet, deepening the question of whether Michael Saylor has become a structural seller instead of a buyer. Ram Ahluwalia, Austin Campbell, and Chris Perkins break down the STRC dividend mechanics behind the sale, the bull case for a catch-up trade, and the bear case if Bitcoin never rallies back. Hosts: Austin Campbell, Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern Ram Ahluwalia, Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida Chris Perkins, Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto This clip is from a longer conversation on Strategy's Bitcoin sale, the stablecoin wars, and the token versus equity debate. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/H3z68SYty0k  We go live every Monday at 4:30pm ET. Subscribe to catch it live. Sponsor: 👉 Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained  (use code: UNCHAINED). Chapters: 💰 00:00 Strategy's record $216M Bitcoin sale: the numbers behind the disclosure 📉 01:14 mNAV falls below 1 for the first time, and the STRC dividend framework 🔁 02:31 Why Ram says selling Bitcoin beats issuing more MSTR shares ⚖️ 04:21 The bear case: what happens if Bitcoin doesn't rally from here ✈️ 05:24 Chris on Saylor's three-body problem after a week of conferences in London Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let's start with the real first story, which is strategy sells Bitcoin again. This time in size. So strategy sold 3,58 Bitcoin as disclosed for $216 million in cash roughly. That's its biggest tranche yet, capping some previous selling to fund the preferred dividends. So one of the things that we're looking at is with the MNAV premium gone, the question becomes, is selling Bitcoin to cover the dividends, the routine? Is it still an accumulator, or is this now a recurring seller in the current Bitcoin environment? So the facts, as we've said, were they broke their multi-year no-sell streak with the 32 Bitcoin sale and now have followed on a month later

with a much larger sale. The holdings as of July 5th are 843,775 Bitcoin in reserves, $2.55 billion of U.S. dollar reserves and a cost basis of $75,700 a coin significantly above the 60K range where coins are currently trading. MNAV fell below one for the first time on June 27th to 99 cents. It has since recovered some. That is per coin desk and MNAV.com. Those numbers vary a little, depending on how you compute. them directionally correct. STRC had traded as low as 74-57. I saw it back up around the 90s today before the show started. The dividend was raised 50 basis points to 12%.

So certainly it is improved. It is not fully back to the $100 of par. And the new framework is authorizing selling of up to 1.25 billion of Bitcoin. the monetization program plus a repurchase program, STRC first. So I want to start here before we get into like deeper bull and bear cases. Chris, I know you're like an investment banking guy. Rom, you've done a lot of investing. What do you think of the structural mechanics here?

Like Saylor clearly is now pivoted to selling Bitcoin off the balance sheet versus is issuing even more MSTR. What is that telling you as a starting point? I'll go forward, man. Well, look, two ways to fund the debt obligations. They can either issue common stock, which is dilutive, and when her MSTR, that would send MSTR going down, or they can sell Bitcoin. And if they do sell Bitcoin, then they get this narrative violation.

We mentioned last week that MSTR could be prone to a short covering rally. You're seeing that on the news. What's more constructive as you're seeing STRC and STRF start to close the gap versus PAR in the last few days. That's notable. They need to get that to par value. That's critical. If they can do that, then they can take a deep breath. They still have challenges ahead.

But if they can't close that gap, that's going to be an issue. I still view this as like a trading asset prone to these violent short covering rallies. I think it's in the midst of one right now. I'd also want to look at the dates of their sales of Bitcoin versus the announcement date. Because if they were able to sell Bitcoin and Bitcoin supported the sale and digested it and also rallied the last few days, that's pretty encouraging. I don't know if anyone's looked at that data. I mean, you're sort of piling into what the bull case is, right?

Which is to say, so Dan Crypto, micro strategy with Nav at 1.09 and STRC on its way back, people will see everything around 1MNAV as a good value by. BTC actually went up during selling this week. A couple of others who've noted the same thing, right? Like Josh Mandel, Pete Rizzo, that they have sold and behaves like you know, essentially a buyback of these things. The bear read on the converse part, though, Rahm, is that the premium is dead and Bitcoin is still not going up. It is now a Bitcoin seller. Rollin and Peter Schiff both said that. So like, this kind of cuts both ways without Bitcoin

going significantly up, right? Like, I mean, my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, they have significant dividend coverage right now. Sailor can sit on his hand. Abley, for a decent amount of time and do nothing. But the problem is when you get to the point where that cash runs out, paying the preferred, even if the preferreds have recovered a decent amount, if Bitcoin's not moving, aren't we right back where we started just a year later? Yeah, my guess is that you had fast-moving traders step into Buy the Dip when you saw that volume capitulation and a lot of puking last week.

That's fast money. I don't think that's enduring long-term buy. They probably will sell that and get a quick flip. So I'll chime in. I was in London last week. Quite a week, by the way. I was at the Robin Hood event, which we should talk about, which was pretty amazing. But prior to that, I went to the Goldman event, then I went to a second event that I'm not supposed to talk about.

But I had a chance to see Sailor speak twice. And, you know, he got up on stage and he was very, very focused on defending and protected. the dividend on the preferreds. He tried to imbue the listeners with confidence in his commitment to Bitcoin. And so he's trying to navigate this three-body problem. And I think his actions today made it very clear that he's protecting the dividend and hoping that that brings confidence back into the system. The unfortunate thing for me is that we're stuck.

Like the crypto narrative right now seems to be stuck. on this micro strategy like thing. And unfortunately for many of us, strategy is not crypto. Crypto is not strategy, but we're all stuck there because it feels like to move forward. We have to navigate this until we move on to the next opportunity or challenge. It reminds me back of the day, I think we have talked about this. Every day you turn on the Bloomberg and all I talked about was pigs like every single day. And eventually the market worked through that when there are sovereign challenges.

in Europe. So I'm ready for us to move past this. Now, I'm hopefully encouraged because to your point, maybe it was some short covering, but like Bitcoin has shown a nice degree of resiliency today. And as this announcement broke, it's been relatively resilient. We've had some other maybe positive tailwinds. I don't know if this had any to do with it, but the announcement of, you know, Trump saying that he likes crypto on the launch of the Trump accounts today. So I'm just looking forward to the point where we stop focusing on the three body problem. I would love to not talk about this anymore. We have to because the market is stuck on it. Bitcoin is still a huge amount of crypto and to many people we still forget. Crypto is Bitcoin and Bitcoin is

crypto and therefore strategy is crypto. I'm ready for us to break that and get back focusing on fundamentals. If you like this segment, please like, subscribe and tune in every Monday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern time. I'm Austin Campbell, the host of Bips and Bips, along with my friends Rahm Alawalia and Chris Perkins and our slate of exceptional guests. Every week, we're going to discuss macro, crypto, and the collision of worlds covering topics that move markets and shape the financial landscape. If you hold crypto on your phone, your biggest vulnerability isn't your wallet. It's your carrier. AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile have been breached again and again, and SIM swaps are still one of the easiest ways for attackers to drain accounts. That's where Cape comes in, America's Privacy

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