Strategy Pauses Bitcoin Buying, Spends $205M Buying Back STRC

Strategy did not buy any Bitcoin last week, breaking a run of weekly purchases that began in mid-September, as it spent $204.9 million buying back its STRC preferred stock instead, the company said on Monday.

The Bitcoin treasury firm also sold no shares through its at-the-market offering program between October 19 and 25, according to an SEC filing. It holds 848,517 BTC, acquired for a total of $64.02 billion at an average of $75,446 per coin.

The pause follows a string of smaller Bitcoin purchases. Strategy bought 267 BTC for $22.1 million the previous week, after spending $21.5 million on 250 BTC the week before that and $29 million in the week it posted a $21 billion third-quarter gain.

The STRC buyback, covering 2,068,459 shares, was the largest of those weeks, up from $193.1 million the week before and $192.4 million the week prior. Strategy paid for it entirely from USD Cash, the pool of money it keeps for general purposes including buying Bitcoin, which fell to $242.4 million from $447.3 million a week earlier.

Its separate USD Reserve, which is meant to cover preferred dividends and interest on its debt, held steady at $4.83 billion. After the latest buyback, $956.8 million remains available under the company's $3 billion program for repurchasing its preferred stock, which it raised from $2 billion a week ago. A separate program to buy back MSTR common stock has $1 billion left.

Strategy and the MSCI rules

The pause comes as Strategy faces possible removal from MSCI's widely tracked equity indexes. MSCI finalized a rule on October 15 that treats "non-operating companies," those whose balance sheets are dominated by a single asset, as ineligible for its Global Investable Market Indexes from the close of November 30. The index provider will publish the list of affected companies on November 11.

Removal would force funds that track the indexes to sell the affected shares. Strategy chairman Michael Saylor had urged MSCI to drop what he called a "discriminatory" rule.