Strategy bought 334 bitcoin for $28.7 million last week, its smallest purchase of 2026, and spent $176.3 million over the same window buying back its own preferred stock, a sixfold difference that changes how the company’s balance sheet story reads. The Monday 8-K filed with the SEC put holdings at exactly 848,000 BTC as of October 4, with a total cost basis of about $63.97 billion and an average entry of $75,440.70 per coin.
The buy, executed between October 1 and October 4 at an average price of $85,838.80, was a fifth the size of the prior week’s 1,665 BTC purchase. It was funded by $15.7 million in proceeds from selling 92,894 Class A MSTR shares under the company’s at-the-market program, plus $13 million in cash. No shares of the preferred series STRF, STRC or STRK were sold, and $18.83 billion of MSTR stock remains available under the ATM.
Where the money actually went
The repurchase side of the filing is the larger number. Between September 28 and September 30 Strategy bought back 1,033,168 STRC shares for $102.6 million. Between October 1 and October 4 it added another 740,634 shares for $73.7 million. That brings the week’s preferred buybacks to about 1.77 million shares, $176.3 million, drawn mostly from USD Cash, the company’s general dollar pool: $154.1 million for buybacks against $13 million for bitcoin.
Total preferred-stock repurchases now stand near $1.45 billion under the program, with $547.2 million of the authorization left. STRC, which pays a 12 percent annual dividend, has traded below its $100 stated amount for nearly 100 consecutive sessions despite the buybacks. The company has also proposed moving several preferred dividends to a daily schedule, pending shareholder approval, a step that would let it retire stock more aggressively without waiting for approval windows.
“Strategy reports a $21 billion gain on digital assets in Q3 2026. Last week, we acquired 334 BTC and repurchased $176M of STRC. As of 10/4/26, we hold 848,000 BTC and $5.7B of USD Assets,” the company said in a post on X announcing the filing.
The accounting behind the headline number
The filing also estimates a $20.91 billion gain on digital assets for the third quarter. That figure comes from fair-value accounting, not realized trading profit. Bitcoin’s roughly 43 percent third-quarter rise lifted the carrying value of the holdings to $70.82 billion at September 30, and the unrealized gain is the difference between that marking and cost basis flows during the quarter. It does not represent coins sold.
Because the company’s liabilities include convertible bonds and preferred dividends tied to the same bitcoin position, the fair-value gain supports equity on paper but also raises the stakes on the funding model. Each quarter the preferred stack pays out cash dividends in dollars while the underlying asset marks up or down. The buyback emphasis this week suggests management would rather defend the preferred funding channel, the machinery that converts equity sales into bitcoin purchases, than accelerate accumulation at current prices.
What changed in the capital-allocation math
Two numbers explain the shift. First, the price: at an $85,838 average, Strategy paid more per coin this week than its $75,440 lifetime average, so each marginal BTC buys less upside relative to basis. Second, the preferred: STRC sitting below par for a hundred sessions is a persistent discount on a security you can retire at $100. Buying back a share below stated amount locks in a spread the coin cannot offer at these levels.
Executive chairman Michael Saylor teased the filing with an X post captioned “More orange than ever.” The stock told a different story. MSTR fell 7.1 percent last week to close at $160.01, down 48 percent over the past year, so selling common at the ATM is a more expensive funding route than it was, which also argues for slower weekly buys.
The context around the drip
Strategy is not the only accumulator slowing down relative to earlier in the year. Last week BeInCrypto noted the buy was the smallest of a three-week streak. Meanwhile other treasuries are still adding: Strive bought 2,000 BTC for about $169 million, its largest purchase since June, bringing it to 29,462 BTC, within 6,115 coins of MARA’s position as the fourth-largest public holder.
Spot ETF flows, the other structural bid, returned to positive territory in the first days of October after a weak late September, which Citi cited when it raised its bitcoin outlook. The market into which Strategy drips is therefore better supplied than the one into which it was buying at $106,000 last cycle, and the company appears to have adjusted its pace accordingly.
Daily market data adds texture to the tape bitcoin sits in. Bitcoin trades near $86,500 after breaking through ask liquidity near $87,800, with short liquidations topping $120 million in that push. Futures open interest is $55.22 billion, up 3.89 percent over 30 days, with Deribit’s put/call ratio at 0.56 and heavy gamma concentrated around $90,000, $95,000 and $100,000 strikes. Roughly $344 million in liquidations crossed between September 30 and October 2. Against that, Strategy’s 334 coins is noise. The filing matters for what it says about funding, not for its effect on supply.
The filing leaves the direction of travel visible but not dramatic. Strategy still accumulates, still funds through equity, and still supports its preferred holders. What changed this week is the ratio: for every dollar that reached bitcoin, six went to the plumbing.