Strategy bought no Bitcoin last week, breaking a streak of weekly purchases that began in mid-September, while it spent $204.9 million buying back its STRC preferred stock, the company said on Monday (26).
The Bitcoin treasury company also sold no shares through its at-the-market offering programme between 19 and 25 October, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It holds 848,517 BTC, acquired for a total of $64.02 billion at an average price of $75,446 per coin.
The pause follows a series of smaller Bitcoin purchases. Strategy bought 267 BTC for $22.1 million the week before, after spending $21.5 million on 250 BTC the week before that, and $29 million in the week it posted a $21 billion gain for the third quarter.
The STRC buyback, covering 2,068,459 shares, was the largest of these weeks, up from $193.1 million the previous week and $192.4 million the week before that. Strategy paid for it entirely out of its USD Cash, the pool of money it keeps for general purposes, including Bitcoin purchases, which fell to $242.4 million from $447.3 million a week earlier.
Its separate USD Reserve, set aside 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 programme for repurchasing its preferred shares, which was raised from $2 billion a week earlier. A separate programme to buy back MSTR ordinary shares has $1 billion remaining.
Strategy and MSCI's rules
The pause comes as Strategy faces possible removal from MSCI's equity indices. MSCI finalised a rule on 15 October that treats "non-operating companies" — those whose balance sheets are dominated by a single asset — as ineligible for its Global Investable Market Indices from the close of 30 November. The index provider will publish the list of affected companies on 11 November.
Removal would force index-tracking funds to sell the affected shares. Strategy's chairman, Michael Saylor, had urged MSCI to abandon what he called a "discriminatory" rule.
* Translated and edited with permission from Decrypt.
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