Strategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) sold 18.26 million shares last week, raising $2.01 billion, yet made no moves to add to its existing Bitcoin holdings.
The company’s Bitcoin stash remained unchanged at 840,447 BTC, with no purchases or sales recorded during the period.
Instead of deploying capital directly into Bitcoin, Strategy allocated $1.59 billion into a USD cash pool, effectively creating a significant reserve of dry powder.
Analyst Scott Melker noted the funds could be used for buying Bitcoin, buying back MSTR stock, or any other financial maneuver the company chooses to pursue.
An additional $300 million was added to the company’s protected reserve, the fund used to cover obligations and dividends and provide operational runway.
Strategy also used a portion of the raise to buy back some of its MSTRC preferred shares, a move that signals an increasingly sophisticated treasury management approach.
The share sale itself has drawn criticism from investors, with the dilution of existing shares being an unpopular but familiar tactic for the firm.
Melker raised the question of why Strategy has not immediately deployed the $1.59 billion into Bitcoin, suggesting the optics of selling low and buying back higher would be unfavorable.
The analyst noted that Strategy has historically bought at the top and, in this cycle, was forced to sell near what appears to be a market low, a position that creates significant strategic tension.
Bitcoin’s rally from the low $60,000 range toward the $80,000 level occurred largely without Strategy as an active buyer, challenging the narrative that Michael Saylor was the market’s primary demand driver.
Melker argued that Bitcoin’s continued rally even as Strategy stepped back as a buyer represents a major narrative shift for the broader market.
Meanwhile, Bitmine and its backer Tom Lee have taken the opposite approach, with the company purchasing 32,447 ETH for $81 million in what was described as the company’s largest weekly haul since early July.
Bitmine is now just 187,000 ETH away from owning 5% of the total Ethereum supply, a milestone that would cement its position as a dominant institutional holder of the asset.
The company projects approximately $330 million in annualized revenue from staking its Ethereum holdings, a yield-generating strategy unavailable to Bitcoin treasury companies.
As Melker summarized, one treasury company found the sell button, while the other removed it entirely, drawing a sharp contrast between Strategy’s current posture and Bitmine’s aggressive accumulation.
