Strategy's Phong Le Defends Bitcoin Sales as Cash Reserve Hits $4.65 Billion

Strategy sold Bitcoin for the second week in a row and used the proceeds to buy back its own preferred stock, pushing its dollar reserve to a record $4.65 billion. The move is the latest in a string of sales that has reignited debate over whether the company's "never sell" posture on Bitcoin has quietly changed.

THE WEEKLY FILING

Strategy sold 1,690 Bitcoin for $108.6 million between Aug. 3 and Aug. 9 at an average price of $64,262 per coin, according to a Monday 8-K filing with the SEC. Every dollar of that sale went straight into buying back 1,152,020 shares of its Stretch preferred stock, known as STRC, in the company's third buyback under a $1 billion Digital Credit Securities Repurchase Program. That leaves $785.2 million of authorization remaining in the program.

The transaction marked Strategy's fourth disclosed Bitcoin sale of 2026, bringing its total Bitcoin sales for the year to 6,948 BTC, while the company still holds 840,447 BTC purchased for an aggregate $63.36 billion. The average purchase price across the full treasury sits at $75,385 per Bitcoin, well above the price the company sold at last week.

On the cash side, Strategy sold 6,585,682 common shares through its at-the-market offering program, generating net proceeds of $653.1 million, with $650 million of that directed straight into the company's dollar reserve. That reserve stood at $4.65 billion as of Aug. 9, up from $4 billion. The moves also extended the reserve's duration by 143 days to 2.7 years and tightened STRC's Bitcoin-backed credit spread by 10 basis points.

PHONG LE'S CASE FOR SELLING

Strategy CEO Phong Le has spent the past few months making the case that the company's occasional Bitcoin sales are being badly misread. Back in May, Strategy sold 32 Bitcoin for approximately $2.5 million at an average price of $77,135 per coin, a transaction that despite representing just 0.004% of the company's total holdings set off an outsized market reaction and reignited debate over whether Michael Saylor's "never sell" doctrine was being abandoned.

Le pushed back directly. "We wanted to inoculate the market and we wanted to test our processes," Le said, adding, "We learned that everything works." He listed three reasons for the sale: to prove the company's ability to sell when necessary, to confirm that internal disposal processes are fully operational, and to capture tax loss opportunities. Le has also argued that institutional shareholders were not unnerved by the sales, saying the real unease comes from "the retail community that views on never selling your Bitcoin, who are crypto-anarchists."

A month later, after a much larger $216 million sale, Le made the same point even more bluntly. "We sold about $200 million of Bitcoin, but it did not move the market," he said. The company's own weekly reports back that up: sale weeks have sometimes coincided with the price falling and sometimes with the price rising, undercutting the idea that Strategy's trading desk is what has been propping up or crushing Bitcoin's price.

THE CREDIT RATING BEHIND THE SELLING

S&P Global assigned Strategy a B- issuer credit rating in October 2025, the first time a major ratings agency had rated a Bitcoin treasury company, citing the firm's high bitcoin concentration and low U.S. dollar liquidity. Since then, nearly every move Strategy has made, building the dollar reserve, buying back Stretch shares below par, extending reserve duration, reads as an attempt to answer that specific criticism: prove Bitcoin can be converted to cash on demand and prove the balance sheet can absorb shocks without relying on new debt. That framing turns the sales from a story about conviction into a story about balance sheet architecture. Selling a sliver of a treasury worth tens of billions of dollars to retire preferred stock at a discount does not generate a cash profit on the trade; it retires a future dividend obligation and strengthens the capital structure the company will need to carry into the next cycle.

WHAT IT MEANS FOR STRETCH AND MSTR

STRC has traded below its $100 par value since early May and recently traded at about $95, still working its way back after the product's early wobble scared off some buyers. MSTR common stock has fared worse, trading well below the highs that accompanied Strategy's biggest buying sprees.

The pattern across nearly every move Strategy has announced since the credit rating landed is the same: build liquidity now, even if it means selling a small amount of Bitcoin and diluting common shareholders in the short term, so the company does not find itself in the same tight spot the next time a bear market arrives.

This story comes from the Simply Bitcoin Live show. Watch the full episode.