Saylor says Strategy may sell Bitcoin to pay dividends in policy shift
Michael Saylor told investors on Tuesday that Strategy could sell Bitcoin under certain conditions, marking a notable departure from the company's long-standing accumulation-only posture. The comments came during a first-quarter 2026 earnings call that revealed a net loss of $12.54 billion, driven almost entirely by unrealized declines in the company's massive cryptocurrency holdings.
Saylor outlined several financial policy principles during the presentation, including a commitment to sell Bitcoin when doing so is advantageous to the company. He added that Strategy would likely sell Bitcoin to pay dividends, framing any such decision as a liquidity demonstration intended to reassure the market. The statement represents a direct reversal of his February 2025 post on X in which he declared that one should never sell Bitcoin, as well as his repeated assurances as recently as February 2026 that the company would not liquidate its holdings regardless of market conditions. Strategy has sold Bitcoin only once in its history, disposing of 704 BTC on December 22, 2022, before immediately buying back 810 BTC. MSTR shares fell roughly 4 percent in after-hours trading on Tuesday from their closing price of $186.90.
The quarterly loss was driven almost entirely by a $14.46 billion unrealized impairment on the company's Bitcoin holdings, whose price collapsed below $62,000 during the February selloff. The core software business generated a gross profit of $83.4 million, representing a gross margin of 67.1 percent. Strategy held 818,334 Bitcoin as of early May, acquired at an average cost of $75,537 per unit and a total cost basis of $61.81 billion. The company added approximately 89,600 BTC for $5.5 billion during the quarter, its second-largest quarterly purchase on record.
The shift in rhetoric arrives as Strategy faces growing obligations tied to its STRC preferred stock product, which reached $8.5 billion in nine months. Saylor framed potential Bitcoin sales not as a capitulation but as part of a broader effort to increase Bitcoin per share, a metric the company has established as its primary performance indicator. As early as January, Strategy's chief executive Phong Le had acknowledged during a podcast that the company would sell Bitcoin if necessary, a statement Saylor at the time described as rational. Tuesday's comments move that possibility from the fine print of risk disclosures into the realm of stated corporate strategy.
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