Michael Saylor said Monday that Strategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) shareholders had approved an amendment moving STRC preferred dividends from monthly to semi-monthly.
The first record date is June 30 and the first payment July 15.
A separate 8-K filed this morning disclosed that Strategy sold roughly 1.4 million MSTR shares for $181 million through its at-the-market program last week, used the proceeds to buy another 1,550 Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), and earmarked a $1 billion cash reserve specifically to backstop preferred dividends and interest payments.
Schiff’s Flywheel Argument
Peter Schiff, the gold bug and persistent Bitcoin critic, was not impressed by the new changes.
He posted that Strategy’s original model generated positive Bitcoin yield by issuing common stock at a premium to net asset value, then later by issuing preferred stock at coupons below Bitcoin’s expected appreciation.
Now, Schiff argued, Saylor is “forcing common shareholders to accept a negative Bitcoin yield just to prop up Bitcoin.”
The dedicated $1 billion preferred-dividend backstop, disclosed the same morning, lines up neatly with that structural critique. Schiff has spent the past several weeks calling STRC a classic centralized Ponzi, arguing the dividend model depends on continuous capital inflows.
The First Bitcoin Sale Since 2022
Strategy also sold 32 Bitcoin for roughly $2.5 million between May 26 and May 31, its first disclosed sale since December 2022. The amount is symbolic, but it puts Saylor’s May earnings call line about selling bitcoin “to inoculate the market” into practice.
The disclosure timing has now spilled into prediction markets. The sale wasn’t filed in an 8-K until June 1, after a May 31 Polymarket contract on whether Strategy would sell any Bitcoin had already resolved. The technicality has triggered a roughly $60 million resolution dispute in UMA’s oracle system, the protocol Polymarket uses to settle outcomes.
Two Prime CEO Alexander Blume warned last week that Saylor may have “flown too close to the sun,” arguing the preferred-stack math could force more Bitcoin sales to fund STRC dividends.
MSTR is trading at $127, up roughly 5% Monday, with Bitcoin near $63,500.
Image: Shutterstock
Login to comment