Strategy buys $1.3 billion of Bitcoin using mostly common stock

Michael Saylor’s Strategy Inc. accelerated its Bitcoin buying with a nearly $1.3 billion purchase—the biggest in seven weeks—leaning again on its common stock despite earlier pledges to pivot to perpetual preferred shares.

The company, formerly known as MicroStrategy, bought 17,994 Bitcoin between March 2 and March 8, according to a regulatory filing Monday. Roughly $900 million of the purchase was funded through sales of Class A common stock. The remaining $377 million—about 30% of the total—came from at-the-market sales of its “Stretch” preferred shares, which were sold at a discount to face value.

The move marks an acceleration from last week, when just 3% of the total was funded through Stretch, despite management previously signaling that Strategy would prioritize Stretch sales. Still, the shift falls short of a major shift in funding strategy.

“While Strategy has been spurring demand for STRC by making more investors aware of its role as a high-yield money market equivalent, that effort remains in its early stages,” said Mark Palmer, an analyst at Benchmark, who rates the company a buy. “We expect STRC to emerge as Strategy’s primary funding vehicle as demand increases.” 

Benchmark is part of a syndicate of agents authorized to sell Strategy’s common shares and preferred stock to investors.

The company has sold about $1.7 billion in common stock and about $470 million of perpetual preferred shares to finance its past seven weekly Bitcoin purchases. Continued issuance of common stock dilutes the value of existing shareholders’ holdings. 

The perpetual preferred shares that Strategy began selling in 2025 give Saylor a way to keep buying without further punishing the people who already own the common stock. The firm is paying an 11.5% annual yield, reset monthly and hiked several times since launch, to attract capital that it uses to buy an asset currently trading below its cost basis. For this strategy to remain viable, Bitcoin needs to appreciate faster than Strategy’s obligations compound. Strategy has a cash reserve of about $2.25 billion.

The average purchase price of the latest acquisition was nearly $76,000 — a premium to Bitcoin’s trading price of around $69,000 on Monday. The company’s overall average purchase price stands at about $71,000. Still, the stability of Stretch may be attractive to investors after a volatile stretch for Bitcoin in the final months of 2025, including a sharp selloff that hammered crypto-heavy balance sheets. 

Bitcoin has remained highly volatile this year. The coin surged past $73,000 last week before paring those gains. The swings come as global markets face continued pressure tied to the ongoing conflict in Iran. Strategy’s common stock—which is widely considered a Bitcoin proxy and often moves in tandem with the cryptocurrency—is down about 55% over the past 12 months.

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