Chief Strategy Officer Phong Le has no regrets about selling Bitcoin when it was near $60,000, and repurchased it at a higher price in the following weeks.
In an interview with Bloomberg Crypto on Wednesday, Le explained that this apparent "sell low, buy high" move reflected changes in the company's balance sheet and financing costs—rather than a bet on Bitcoin’s price.
“At the time, selling Bitcoin to fund our STRC dividends was the right transaction,” Le said. “Now, selling MSTR at a premium to buy Bitcoin is the right transaction.”
According to the company’s Bitcoin ledger, from late June to mid-August, the company sold a total of 6,916 BTC in four tranches at a weighted average price of about $62,200, then last week purchased 4,603 BTC at an average price of $80,318.
Regulatory filings on August 31 show that, during the week ending August 30, the company bought 4,603 BTC at a total cost of $369.7 million and an average price of $80,318 per coin. The purchase was financed by selling MSTR shares, which raised the company’s total Bitcoin holdings to 845,050 BTC—roughly $65.4 billion.
However, Le noted that the company’s decisions were based on its balance sheet, not on Bitcoin’s market price.
“We don’t really make Bitcoin decisions based on the price of Bitcoin,” he said. “What were we doing over the last two months when we weren’t buying Bitcoin? We were strengthening our balance sheet.”
Le said that during the two-month pause in purchasing, the company’s assets grew to $72 billion—of which $65 billion was in Bitcoin and around $7 billion in USD reserves—while reducing net debt from about $7 billion to zero.
A stronger balance sheet has lowered the cost of issuing MSTR stock and using the proceeds to buy Bitcoin. He noted that when the company’s stock isn’t trading well, selling Bitcoin is a better way to meet its financial obligations.
Despite its Bitcoin holdings being at a loss and concerns mounting around its debt and preferred stock financing, the company accelerated its Bitcoin purchases in February.
In May, the company dropped its “never sell” stance and instead committed to maintaining a net long position in Bitcoin. This shift happened after STRC—its floating-rate perpetual preferred stock—fell below its $100 face value in June. Since the company adjusted the STRC dividend to keep trading near $100 per share, the decline reduced the appeal of issuing more shares and decreased a key funding source for Bitcoin purchases.
Le said: “It’s a two-way strategy. Sometimes selling Bitcoin makes sense.” He added, “Those 7,000 BTC are less than 1% of our total Bitcoin holdings.”
Le noted that although this sale amounted to less than 1% of the company’s total Bitcoin holdings, it attracted a disproportionate amount of attention, while the company’s Bitcoin holdings have increased by 25% to 30% this year.
He said: “A one-way accumulator is not really a fully functioning company. A company that can buy and sell Bitcoin, buy and sell stock, buy and sell preferred shares—that is a truly operational enterprise and a two-way capital management firm. That’s who we are.”
