Bitcoin’s (BTCUSD) recent slide has put Strategy (MSTR) in a painful spot on paper. The company holds 847,363 BTC purchased at an average price of $75,651 per coin. With Bitcoin now trading around $59,000, that gap works out to roughly $14 billion in unrealized losses.
But what’s more telling is what the company is doing about it — or rather, what it is not doing. Strategy has not stopped buying BTC. Understanding why requires a closer look at how Executive Chairman Michael Saylor and President and CEO Phong Le think about Bitcoin, losses, and the long game they are playing.
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Strategy Keeps Buying Bitcoin Even as Prices Fall
A look at Strategy’s weekly acquisition tracker tells a clear story. The company has made 114 separate Bitcoin purchases since 2020, without skipping a single quarter. Even during the current downturn, it has continued adding to its stack.
In the week ended June 22, 2026, Strategy acquired 520 Bitcoin at an average price of $67,068, according to the company’s publicly filed data. That brought its total holdings to 847,363 BTC, worth roughly $50 billion at current prices.
The week before that, on June 15, the company bought 1,587 Bitcoin for around $100 million, while the week ended May 18 saw one of the biggest single purchases of the year, with 24,869 Bitcoin acquired for over $2 billion. This is a deliberate, programmatic strategy that Saylor has built the entire company around.
What $14 Billion in Unrealized Losses Means for MSTR Stock
On the surface, $14 billion in unrealized losses sounds alarming. But context matters here.
First, these losses are unrealized. Strategy has not sold its Bitcoin, so no actual loss has been locked in. If prices recover, the losses will disappear.
Second, Strategy’s first-quarter 2026 earnings call, held on May 5, laid out a detailed framework for managing risk. CFO Andrew Kang noted that even if Bitcoin’s price dropped by 91% to around $7,300, the company’s BTC reserve would still be sufficient to cover its net debt at a one-to-one ratio.
Strategy’s net leverage sits at roughly 9% of its total Bitcoin reserve, which it describes as having a 10.8x BTC rating. That means the Bitcoin reserve is more than 10 times the net debt load.
“Our net leverage is lower than the average of the investment-grade S&P universe, and lower than every major industry sector across most S&P 500 companies,” Kang said during the Q1 earnings call.
Lastly, Strategy holds Bitcoin at a wide range of cost bases. Some coins were bought for as little as roughly $10,000. CEO Phong Le has pointed out that the company has the option to sell high-cost-basis Bitcoin to realize tax losses, which can benefit the balance sheet without causing a real economic setback.
Strategy’s Bitcoin Yield Is Still Growing
Despite price pressure, Strategy’s core metric — Bitcoin per share (BTC yield) — has continued to grow.
Year-to-date (YTD) through May 2026, the company delivered 9.4% BTC yield. For context, full-year 2025 came in at 22.8%. Strategy added roughly 63,410 Bitcoin in the first four months of 2026, already capturing about 62% of what it gained in all of 2025.
Bitcoin per share has grown from about 181,030 satoshis (sats) per share in May 2025 to 213,371 sats per share as of May 2026, marking an 18% year-over-year (YOY) increase.
Strategy does not measure success by the paper value of its holdings on any given day. It measures success by how much Bitcoin each share represents over time. And by that measure, it is still moving in the right direction.
Will Strategy Sell Its Bitcoin?
One question has been on investors’ minds since Saylor and management made comments during the Q1 earnings call signaling more flexibility in how the company manages its BTC holdings. Saylor was direct about the matter in one interview: “I think it’s not unlikely that we’ll sell some Bitcoin between now and the end of year.”
Strategy’s models show that if Stretch, a flagship preferred stock product, generates new capital above a certain threshold — specifically, if Bitcoin grows at more than 2.3% annually — the company can fund its dividend obligations by selling small amounts of Bitcoin and still grow its total holdings.
“If we run it at a 20% issuance rate [of Stretch], then the first-order model shows we generate a BTC yield of 17.7%. We accumulate an additional 144,000 Bitcoin — and that is after we pay all the dividends by selling Bitcoin,” Saylor said during the earnings call.
Strategy’s position is built on a conviction that Bitcoin’s long-term trajectory justifies short-term discomfort.
Down 81% from all-time highs, Strategy has a market capitalization of $32 billion. Out of the 18 analysts tracking MSTR stock, 15 recommend a “Strong Buy” rating, one recommends a “Moderate Buy,” one recommends a “Hold,” and one analyst recommends a “Strong Sell” rating. The average MSTR stock price target is $363.62, which represents potential upside of 318% from current levels near $87 per share.
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On the date of publication, Aditya Raghunath did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. This article was originally published on Barchart.com
