Strategy, the largest corporate holder of bitcoin, sold a record amount of its perpetual preferred equity on Monday and used the proceeds to buy an estimated 1,420 BTC in a single session, according to CoinDesk, which cited issuance data from STRC.live. The surge came one day after the company disclosed its smallest weekly purchase of the year, a contrast that shows how quickly the buying machine can accelerate when capital markets cooperate.
A rule change opened the door
The record day followed a change to the way the securities can be sold. A Form 8-K amendment to the Omnibus Sales Agreement allows multiple dealers to sell the same class of shares through the at-the-market program during pre-market or after-hours sessions, not just in a single centralized auction. Block sales after 4 p.m. Eastern remain permitted. STRC, which debuted in July 2025, recorded its largest one-day issuance since launch, with roughly $378 million in sales versus a $124 million 30-day average.
An estimate from STRC.live, a dashboard that back-computes bitcoin purchases directly from ATM sales, pegged Monday’s implied purchase at about 1,420 coins, above the prior daily record of 1,069 BTC. The estimate assumes 40 percent of trading volume above the $100 par value represents new issuance and deducts a 2.5 percent dealer commission before calculating the implied coin count. CoinDesk reported the figure as an estimate rather than a filed number, and the company’s next weekly 8-K will show the actual fill.
Strategy shares rose about 3 percent in premarket trading to roughly $143 following the disclosure, moving with the broader tape of crypto-linked equities as bitcoin held near $86,100.
A small week before the big day
The acceleration follows a slow stretch. In an SEC filing on October 5, the company said it bought just 334 BTC for $28.7 million between October 1 and 4, one fifth the size of the prior week’s 1,665 coin purchase. The average entry price was $85,838.80. Holdings reached exactly 848,000 BTC, worth about $72.4 billion at Monday’s price near $86,100, with an aggregate cost of $63.97 billion and a blended average of $75,441 per coin.
The filing also showed where most of the cash went. Strategy repurchased 1.77 million STRC shares for $176.3 million between September 28 and October 4, roughly six times what it spent on bitcoin, funding the buybacks from a cash reserve rather than asset sales. Executives have described the repurchases as a way to manage a preferred stock that pays investors a 12 percent annual dividend and has traded below its $100 par value. The company also reported an estimated $20.91 billion in third-quarter gains on its digital assets and held $5.7 billion in USD assets as of October 4.
October 1 through 4 purchases were funded with $15.7 million raised from the sale of 92,894 common shares and $13 million from cash. The company bought nothing between September 28 and 30, meaning all of last week’s volume landed in a four-day window.
Strive outbought Strategy six to one
The week’s other large buyer was Strive, the Nasdaq-listed treasury company co-founded by Vivek Ramaswamy. Decrypt reported that Strive bought 2,000 BTC for about $169 million between September 28 and October 2, its largest haul since a 2,500 coin purchase in late May, lifting holdings to 29,462 BTC. Chief executive Matt Cole said sales of SATA preferred stock covered 61.5 percent of the capital, with warrant exercises adding $56.7 million. Strive cashed the purchase out of its own balance sheet and reported $284.7 million in cash on hand and no debt. Strategy’s stack remains roughly 29 times larger.
Rivals fight for a preferred-share market
The contrast between the two firms is concentrated in one product. STRC is a fixed-rate preferred paying 12 percent annually in dollars, and ASTRS is a floating-rate perpetual preferred yielding about 9 percent that pays investors in bitcoin. Strive has marketed its version as tax-advantaged for yield buyers because the payout runs in bitcoin, while STRC pays dollars. At current yields a $100,000 position pays roughly $9,000 a year in ASTRS versus $12,000 from STRC, so a taxable holder comparing the two must weigh pretax size against the after-tax advantage that Strive has claimed since launch.
Strategy is also moving to address its own yield at the shareholder level. An October 5 proxy asks MSTR holders on October 28 to approve daily dividend record dates for its family of preferred securities, with the first STRC daily record date set for November 1 if approved, followed by daily cadence for STRF, STRK and STRD beginning January 1. The change would bring the fixed-rate preferred’s payment schedule in line with the model Strive already uses.
Why the ATM matters
At-the-market issuance is the quiet workhorse of modern treasury finance. Rather than announcing a fixed-size offering and waiting for a pricing, a dealer sells small clips of stock into the ordinary tape all day and wires the proceeds to the issuer on the same day. For Strategy the plumbing is the bitcoin buying machine: dealer sells STRC, proceeds buy BTC, whichever way the tape heats up. The amendment effectively extends the machine into nights and weekends, which is where most crypto liquidity now lives, and the immediate result was a threefold jump in daily issuance and the largest single-day implied purchase in the company’s history.
The structure also explains last week’s lopsided numbers. Because preferred issuance is at the discretion of dealers rather than the company itself, the weekly coin count can swing by a factor of five when trading volume in STRC or ASTRS changes sharply between two consecutive weeks. A bitcoin treasury’s buying power is not a fixed number; it is a function of what the market is willing to absorb on any given day.