In brief
- Strategy acquired 196 Bitcoin worth $22 million
- The Bitcoin-buying firm meanwhile raised $128 million
- Strategy is obligated to make dividend payments on some of its preferred shares.
Strategy notched its third smallest Bitcoin acquisition of the year on Monday, disclosing that it only bought $22 million worth of the asset, according to a press release.
The Tysons, Virginia-based firm now owns roughly 640,000 BTC, which was worth $73.1 billion on Monday, as Bitcoin climbed past $114,000, according to crypto data provider CoinGecko. That sum represented around 3% of the Bitcoin that will ever be mined.
Although the Bitcoin purchase that Strategy disclosed on Monday was its smallest since mid-August, it appears that the move wasn’t a result of constrained funding because Strategy signaled that it had raised $128 million, effectively pocketing the difference.
The cash came from selling $116 million worth of common shares. At the same time, Strategy sold $11.3 million of its STRF offering and $400,000 worth of its STRD offering. Featuring a 10% dividend, STRD was unveiled as Strategy’s third type of preferred shares in June.
“There was an extra $106 million, which we can presume was there for cash interest and to fund future dividends, including, but not limited to those that are due tomorrow,” TD Cowen analyst Lance Vitanza told Decrypt.
Strategy is scheduled to pay its first dividend to STRD holders on Tuesday, on top of payouts for its STRC, STRK, and STRD offerings, as declared in an SEC filing earlier this month. Strategy’s obligation on STRD is currently around $30 million per quarter, Vitanza said.
“That’s a very small amount,” he added.
Strategy shares rose 5% to $324 on Monday, according to Yahoo Finance. Often portrayed as a proxy to Bitcoin, Strategy shares have increased 12% year-to-date, while the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has risen 22% over the same period.
This year, Strategy has augmented its Bitcoin-buying strategy with additional funding mechanisms, moving beyond a pure focus on common stock and convertible debt. That has enabled Strategy to pad its lead as the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin.
However, Wall Street veteran Andy Constan—who said he was shorting Strategy shares earlier this year—is among those that have compared the dynamic to a Ponzi scheme, arguing that Strategy can meet its dividend obligations only by raising more money.
Still, in a recent note, Vitanza highlighted Strategy’s recent focus on preferred shares, saying that its suggests that “market demand for bitcoin-backed credit instruments is growing.”
There have been other signs that Strategy is focused on its dividend obligations. Earlier this month, Strategy withheld a portion of the proceeds from a separate raise. It took in $68 million through its STRK and STRD offerings, but it only spent $60 million on Bitcoin.