Michael Saylor’s Strategy transferred 3,568 BTC worth approximately $297m over nine hours, but blockchain analysts say the movement did not represent a sale.
The transactions were first highlighted by blockchain tracker Lookonchain, which identified 12 outgoing transfers ranging from 137.643 BTC to 452.122 BTC. Together, they amounted to about 3,567.5 BTC. The $297m figure was subsequently shared by other tracking accounts, including Whale Insider.
Arkham analyst Emmett Gallic said the Bitcoin had not been sold. He also noted that the receiving addresses were already labelled as belonging to Fidelity on Arkham.
Fidelity holds customer Bitcoin in pooled wallets rather than assigning each client a separate address. As a result, an internal transfer between the custodian’s wallets can appear on the blockchain as Bitcoin leaving wallets associated with Strategy, even though ownership of the coins has not changed.
The apparent outflow attracted attention because Strategy announced a BTC Monetization Program on June 29. The scheme allows the company to sell Bitcoin “from time to time” to raise up to $1.25bn for its USD Reserve.
Strategy’s July 8-K filing also showed that it sold 1,363 BTC between June 29 and June 30 at an average price of $59,256. A further 2,225 BTC was sold between July 1 and July 5 at an average of $60,773.
Those sales followed years of Michael Saylor building his public profile around holding Bitcoin rather than selling it. The movement of thousands of coins from tagged wallets therefore prompted some traders to assume that another disposal was taking place before checking the destination addresses.
The timing added to the concern. The transfers emerged as Bitcoin fell below $83,000, although it later recovered, while about $500m in positions were liquidated across the cryptocurrency market.
Strategy’s latest filing showed that it bought 1,665 BTC between Sept. 21 and Sept. 27 for $142.7m, paying an average of $85,681 per coin. That purchase increased its Bitcoin treasury to 847,666 coins, acquired for about $63.95bn at an average cost of $75,437 per Bitcoin.
With Bitcoin trading near $83,800, the company’s holdings were worth roughly $71bn. That represented a paper gain of about $6.5bn, with the market price approximately 10% above Strategy’s average purchase cost.
However, the latest purchase was already below its acquisition price. Strategy funded it by selling 1,469,165 MSTR shares and allocated a further $103.5m from the same fundraising to repurchase STRC preferred shares.
The company still has $6.02bn in U.S. dollar reserves, providing funds to pay dividends without selling Bitcoin.
Saylor has continued to promote Bitcoin and recently proposed rules that would allow banks to lend against it. He has also used his Sunday orange charts to preview Strategy’s latest purchases.
Bitcoin closed the week at $84,467, its highest weekly finish in eight months, before falling 1.5%.
