Strategy Sells 3,588 BTC for $216M — Its Largest Bitcoin Sale Ever — as Grayscale Calls a ‘Durable Bottom’

Strategy sold 3,588 BBTC$63,338.00▲1.13% between June 29 and July 5 for approximately $216 million — the company’s largest BTC disposal on record, and more than 100 times the size of its May sale — to cover dividend payments on preferred stock. The transaction, first reported by The Defiant, cut Strategy’s total Bitcoin holdings to 843,775 BTC, still the largest corporate treasury position anywhere by a wide margin.

The market didn’t see it coming. Strategy had spent years as the most aggressive corporate buyer of Bitcoin, issuing debt and equity to stack coins. Its late-May sale of just 32 BTC — the first disposal since December 2022 — had already stirred debate about whether the accumulation thesis was cracking. That smaller sale, executed at an average price of $77,135, raised roughly $2.5 million net of expenses, per Investopedia. Executive chairman Michael Saylor publicly defended it, arguing critics had misread its significance and that it was a routine treasury operation, according to TheStreet.

The June–July sale was a different animal. At 3,588 coins, it dwarfed May’s disposal by two orders of magnitude and stands as the single largest Bitcoin sale in the company’s history. The stated purpose — meeting preferred-stock dividend obligations — immediately raised questions about whether Strategy’s capital structure is generating structural pressure to liquidate the very asset the company has spent years marketing as its core value proposition. Preferred dividends are a fixed obligation, not optional. And unless the underlying software business generates enough cash to cover them, the company could face the same squeeze in future quarters.

Bitcoin fell as much as 4% when news broke, according to CoinTelegraph’s coverage. Sharp, but short-lived. BTC recovered to $63,221, up 0.98% over 24 hours and 6.75% on the week, with a market cap of $1.267 trillion and 24-hour trading volume of $37.67 billion, per live market data. The broader crypto market cap stands at $2.269 trillion, up 0.68% on the day. Bitcoin dominance holds at 55.8%.

Grayscale researchers argued the disposal may have done the market a favour. They told CoinTelegraph that the sale “may give BTC a durable bottom” — the logic being that if the market absorbed a 3,588-coin dump from the largest corporate holder without breaking key support, the underlying bid is stronger than bears had assumed. Bitcoin funding rates climbed to 9% as price recovered, a level that signals leveraged longs are re-engaging, CoinTelegraph reported. Elevated funding cuts both ways: it reflects bullish positioning, but it also raises the cost of holding long exposure and can set up sharp liquidations if momentum stalls.

Not everyone is ready to call the floor. The Fear & Greed Index sits at 27 out of 100 — deep in “Fear” territory as of July 7 — meaning retail sentiment hasn’t caught up with the derivatives market’s optimism. That gap between futures positioning and spot-market caution is a pattern traders have seen before in choppy regimes. Bernstein analysts sit firmly in the bull camp regardless, maintaining a $150,000 Bitcoin price target, according to Decrypt, framing the current level as an accumulation opportunity rather than a warning.

The sale also reopens a question Strategy has faced since its first Bitcoin purchase in 2020: whether a publicly traded software company can function as a reliable Bitcoin proxy without eventually running into the operational demands of being public — dividends, debt service, shareholder expectations that don’t always square with a hold-forever thesis. The preferred-stock dividends that triggered this sale are a structural obligation that predates the company’s Bitcoin treasury strategy. That tension is now front and centre for analysts watching the stock.

For now, Bitcoin has digested the largest corporate disposal in its history and moved higher. EETH$1,779.07▲0.84% leads the top-10 weekly gainers at +11.68%, with SSOL$81.21▲0.79% up 9.8% and ZZEC$457.97▲2.92% surging 13.78% over the same window — a broad-based risk-on move that suggests the Strategy sale’s price impact is fading. The next test is whether it holds. Watch Bitcoin’s funding rates and the Fear & Greed Index over the coming sessions: if funding stays elevated while sentiment stays in fear territory, that divergence itself becomes the trade.