Strategy raises cash reserve with MSTR sale while keeping Bitcoin untouched

Strategy used its own stock, rather than its Bitcoin, to strengthen its cash position last week. For MSTR holders, the move matters because the company is raising dollars to support dividends and debt payments while keeping its main crypto bet intact.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Strategy said it sold 2,732,318 shares of MSTR common stock between July 13 and July 19. The sales brought in $263.5 million in net proceeds through an at-the-market offering program.

An at-the-market program lets a public company sell newly issued shares into the open market over time. That is different from a traditional underwritten stock offering, where banks usually place a large block of shares with investors at once. For existing common shareholders, new stock issuance can matter because it increases the share count and can dilute each existing share’s ownership claim.

Strategy said the fundraising helped increase its USD Reserve by $225 million. As of July 19, the reserve stood at $3.225 billion, according to the filing.

Why Strategy is building a dollar reserve

The USD Reserve is Strategy’s pool of cash for dividend payments and debt obligations, according to the company materials cited in the filing. That cash sits alongside, rather than inside, the company’s Bitcoin reserve.

The structure matters because Strategy has issued several dividend-paying preferred securities, including STRC, STRK, STRF and STRD. Preferred shareholders generally sit ahead of common shareholders in the payment order. They are designed to receive dividends before common stockholders have a claim on remaining value.

Michael Saylor, Strategy’s executive chairman, confirmed the reserve update in a post on X. He said the company had increased its USD Reserve by $225 million and still held 843,775 BTC as of July 19. That Bitcoin total equals roughly 4% of Bitcoin’s fixed 21 million coin supply, according to the figures cited by the company.

The company also said it did not sell Bitcoin during the period. Strategy instead leaned again on stock issuance, after raising $466.7 million through common stock sales the prior week, according to company disclosures cited by Decrypt.

Share sale draws criticism

The decision brought renewed attention to the trade-off at the center of Strategy’s model: using public equity and preferred securities to finance a balance sheet built around Bitcoin.

Peter Schiff criticized the move, arguing that selling MSTR shares unnecessarily hurts common shareholders, according to Decrypt. Schiff also suggested Strategy may be avoiding a Bitcoin sale because it worries demand could fail to absorb a large sale without pressuring the token’s price.

That view is Schiff’s interpretation, not a statement from Strategy. The company’s confirmed disclosure is narrower: it sold common stock, increased its dollar reserve, and left its Bitcoin holdings unchanged during the week covered by the filing.

For investors tracking MSTR, the latest update shows how Strategy is trying to manage cash needs while preserving its Bitcoin position. It also shows the cost of that approach: the company can protect its BTC reserve, but doing so through common stock sales shifts more of the funding burden onto MSTR shareholders.

This story draws on original reporting from Decrypt.