This time, it's not the market's guessing.

On May 5, 2026, Strategy released its first quarter report. In the official press release, it disclosed that it holds 818,300 BTC, accounting for about 3.9% of the total number of Bitcoins. It has raised US$11.68 billion so far this year. STRC raised US$5.58 billion during the year and has paid approximately US$693 million in cumulative dividends on its preferred shares.

The more critical sentences are hidden behind.

Strategy acknowledges in its KPI risk statement that the company may need to sell common stock or BTC to raise cash if convertible bonds mature or certain instruments require redemption. During the earnings call, Saylor said more bluntly: The company is likely to sell some BTC to pay dividends. One of the purposes is to "vaccine" the market and tell everyone that this can happen.

CEO Phong Le also added: The company will sell BTC when it is beneficial to itself, and will not just sit there and say "Never sell".

So on Polymarket, the probability of "MicroStrategy selling any BTC before December 31, 2026" once reached about 40%.

What really surprised the market was not how many coins Strategy would sell.

But the myth of "never selling" has finally been dismantled by the officials themselves.

The strongest believer, began to teach the market to acceptSell BTC

In the past few years, MicroStrategy's most valuable thing is not its software business, nor just the BTC on its account, but a simple to crude story:

We buy, we borrow money to buy, we issue shares to buy, but we never sell.

This story is so useful. It turned an enterprise analysis software company into the craziest Bitcoin leveraged ticket in the US stock market. In 2025, the company simply changed its name to Strategy and didn’t even have to hide its name. It no longer acts as a "software company that holds BTC", but directly defines itself as the world's first and largest Bitcoin Treasury Company.

In human terms, it is a financial machine that revolves around the BTC balance sheet.

This machine now has three levels.

The bottom layer, is the 818,300 BTC. According to official disclosures, as of May 3, 2026, the original cost of these coins was approximately US$61.81 billion, the market value was approximately US$64.14 billion, and the average purchase price was approximately US$75,500.

The middle layer, is the software business that still exists. First-quarter revenue was $124 million, an increase of 11.9% year-over-year. This amount of money seems small when put together with more than 60 billion US dollars in BTC, but it leaves Strategy with the shell of an “operating company” and a path for regulatory narratives.

The top level, is an increasingly complex financing tool. Common stock MSTR, preferred stocks STRC, STRF, STRK, STRD, and convertible bonds issued in the past. Strategy is not just buying coins, it is packaging BTC into various income, volatility and credit products and selling them to different flavors of funds.

So this timeselling BTCis not a collapse of faith.

More like a product manual update.

STRC is the protagonist of this turn

Many people stare at Saylor's "SellBTC" wordsbut what really makes the company have to change its caliber is STRC.

This is Strategy’s most proud digital credit product this year. Officials said that STRC reached a scale of US$8.5 billion in 9 months, raised US$5.58 billion during the year, had a daily trading volume of US$375 million, and reduced volatility to 3%. Saylor even said that it has become one of the largest preferred stocks in the world by market value.

The problem is also here.

Preferred stock is not free money. STRC currently yields an annualized dividend of about 11.5%, and the company has also proposed increasing the frequency of payments from monthly to semi-monthly. It sounds smoother, but it actually pushes Strategy from the story of "As long as we are bullish on BTC in the long term" to a more realistic scenario:

It must continue to come up with cash.

In the past, Saylor's favorite action was to send MSTR and buy BTC. This is comfortable when the stock price is trading at a premium. Issuing shares does not immediately bring fixed interest, but also increases the BTC per share metric.

But if MSTR's premium is not high enough, continuing to issue shares will become increasingly ugly. For ordinary shareholders, this is not accumulation, but dilution. At this time, selling a small part of the BTC that has risen to pay preferred stock dividends may be better than issuing shares at a low price.

This is the new logic that Strategy wants to introduce to the market:

It’s not about not selling, it’s about selling to “thicken every BTC share”.

Book losses are the noise of this machine

The most frightening figure in the first quarter report is the loss.

Strategy's operating loss in the first quarter was US$14.47 billion, of which US$14.46 billion came from unrealized losses in BTC's fair value; net loss was US$12.54 billion, and diluted loss per share was US$38.25.

If you put this number on a traditional company, you can basically hold a memorial service directly.

But with Strategy, it's more like accounting noise. After adopting FASB ASU 2023-08, every quarter-end fluctuation in BTC price will directly hit the income statement. When the currency price falls, the losses are huge; when the currency price rebounds, the unrealized gains can be recovered.

Saylor doesn't care much about this income statement. He prefers to let the market look at BTC per share.

Officially disclosed, the BTC Yield so far this year is 9.4%, the BTC Gain is 63,400 BTC, and the BTC USD gain is approximately US$4.97 billion. The story the company really wants to sell is:The number of BTC behind each share of ordinary shareholders is still increasing.

This is why selling BTC can be tricky.

If selling BTC causes BTC per share to fall, that is a failure; if is just to maintain credit tools in exchange for lower cost and larger financing, and the company as a whole is still a net buyer of BTC, then Saylor will say that this is financial engineering, not surrender.

Sounds exquisite.

It's also dangerous.

The market is not afraidYesYesBeing misunderstood

Strategy now holds nearly 4% of total BTC. As long as it moves, the market will watch.

So it's interesting that Saylor said "get vaccinated." He is not hiding from selling, but wants to normalize the matter in advance. Sell a little first and tell the market: Look, it's not collapsed. If you need to sell in the future, there will be less panic.

This is to actively manage public opinion and train traders' nerves.

But the market may not cooperate.

In a bull market, Strategy sells a little BTC to pay dividends, which can be interpreted as mature asset-liability management. When liquidity is fragile, the same action will be read into another sentence by algorithms and leveraged funds:

Even Saylor has started selling.

Polymarket's 40% probability reflects exactly this psychology. It does not necessarily represent real selling pressure, but it does mean that the fuse of the "all buying, no selling" narrative has been pulled.

What’s even more troublesome is that the more tools a Strategy has, the higher the interpretation cost. Ordinary investors buy "MSTR equals leveraged BTC". But what the company is now selling is a far more complex set: BTC reserves, preferred stock dividends, common stock premiums, cash reserves, accounting losses, BTC per share metrics.

The story of faith is only one sentence.

Financial engineering will take half an hour.

Summary

Strategy will continue to buy BTC, and there is no change in sight. The official caliber is still a net aggregator, and the goal is still to increase BTC per share.

But it is no longer the simple HODL totem.

It is more like a private Bitcoin bank that uses BTC as collateral, uses the US stock market as a financing entrance, and uses preferred shares to sell proceeds to fixed-income funds. Instead of locking BTC in a cold wallet and waiting for ten years, it puts BTC into a balance sheet, repeatedly mortgages, finances, values, and interprets it, and then processes the fluctuations into new financial products.

This is certainly smart. Disturbingly clever.

Because this machine only looks perfect under one premise: BTC has been rising for a long time, the financing market continues to open, and investors are willing to believe in the new set of indicators of BTC per share.

If these three conditions are true at the same time, Saylor may really transform a software company into the Berkshire of the BTC era.

If one of them breaks, the market will rediscover an old thing: Faith can pay no interest, but preferred stocks do.

Microstrategies are not betraying Bitcoin.

It just finally admitted that Bitcoin also has to pay the bills.