Michael Saylor's Strategy hints at possible bitcoin sale to cover dividend payments

19 replies 449 views
alex.shardLegendary
Posts: 1019 · Reputation: 5623
#1Jul 23, 2020, 12:51 PM
Check out this news because it might not get the attention it deserves. Some folks are focusing on Michael Saylor's mention of possibly selling a small part of their bitcoin stash to handle dividend payments. Also, take note that their Strategy reported a hefty loss of $12.54 billion in Q1. But look at the average price they paid for bitcoin, which is $75,537. Bitcoin's been on the rise in Q2. Bitcoin has still served its purpose for the company: From the news, it seems like bitcoin dipped a bit and their stock took a hit too. But honestly, I don’t think that's something to really stress about. What do you all think?
6 Reply Quote Share
alex2014Full Member
Posts: 225 · Reputation: 798
#2Jul 23, 2020, 02:02 PM
Micro strategy funded their bitcoin portfolio through funds from other internal sources of the company,  and now they are selling some bitcoin to offset dividends.this is awesome and yes, Bitcoin indeed fulfilled its obligations and keeps fulfilling that since the micro strategy, I am not selling 100% of their total Bitcoin holdings. $75,000 benchmark buying price and selling at the current price is quite a good profit for the company,  and bitcoin indeed made a mark at that moment,. I saw the news on X yesterday, but my thought was that I hope the company will not need to buy back those Bitcoins at a much higher price than their current entry price of $75,000
2 Reply Quote Share
planktonSenior Member
Posts: 473 · Reputation: 1384
#3Jul 23, 2020, 07:07 PM
The funny thing that people are doing with this situation is something Bitcoin miners have been doing wrong for years...  They measure Bitcoin as if it is going to stay the same price or difficulty will stay the same...  Measure how profitable they will be...  Then the price changes massively or the difficulty does and they're looking at a completely different picture. Strategy doing this now seems like misleading more than ignorance.  They say Strategy can pay the dividends for 100 years or whatever.  What they don't consider is Bitcoin's price continuing to fall while Strategy takes on more debt obligations and shareholders sue over their BTC being promised to new preferred offerings. Maybe Saylor pulls off a miracle by holding STRC and MSTR together and buys through the entire bear market.  However, the writing is already being written on the wall... Saylor went from saying he would never sell to saying he was going to, "Inoculate the Market" which for those who may not understand what that means...  It means he's going to sell a ton of BTC and crash the price.  Why do that if he can pay the dividends for a hundred years without selling?  The fish smell is beginning to be too much to ignore.
1 Reply Quote Share
raven07Full Member
Posts: 165 · Reputation: 636
#4Jul 23, 2020, 11:36 PM
STRC's need for dividend distribution is a responsibility they must fulfill. This sale is for that purpose, so don't be surprised if it continues to do the same. From what they've said, they still have a target of 1 million Bitcoins and will definitely buy more. However, what I'm wondering is whether this will trigger other institutions or retailers to sell their Bitcoins, or even create negative sentiment towards Bitcoin purchases at a time when Bitcoin is trying to break above $82,000 this time.
1 Reply Quote Share
real_pixelSenior Member
Posts: 206 · Reputation: 1105
#5Jul 24, 2020, 03:43 AM
They have investors who are expecting dividends and there's no other way for them to pay them but to sell some from their holdings. Anyone who believes that they're not going to sell as what Michael has said before is probably thinking a second thought now. It might be his holdings that he'd never sell but it is not his with what the company holds. It's normal for companies to sell their assets if there's the upcoming dividends pay for its investors. It's their investors that they're using to buy those bitcoins so with the appreciation that they've got from it, everybody deserves to get a share from it.
3 Reply Quote Share
ledger69Member
Posts: 28 · Reputation: 211
#6Jul 24, 2020, 09:31 AM
I would hope that they will not need to, but if they had to, they could and that is the beauty of bitcoin. They are not making a loss, they are in profit, and if they can do this, then they can make some more money. If they do end up selling, one thing that would be not ideal would be that they would be selling something they could have hold, and make more money and that would have been nicer for them, but right now at this moment it is looking like they are not going to make the peak price, but sell at just a bit higher, instead of like 125k where they could have sold less and pay off.
4 Reply Quote Share
paulyieldSenior Member
Posts: 518 · Reputation: 1547
#7Jul 25, 2020, 12:09 AM
Understandable but it also means he's walking back on his statement about not selling bitcoin so it opens up every possibilities. So he's basically saying he'd sell his bitcoin whenever he sees fit, seeing it as just a way to grow their capital and that's it. Although i'm not surprised and knew that it's impossible for a company that seeks profit to hold their bitcoin indefinitely.
3 Reply Quote Share
wolf_2016Full Member
Posts: 36 · Reputation: 303
#8Jul 26, 2020, 07:47 AM
Some of you are acting like he's saying they are currently selling lots of bitcoin haha. That's not what this means. He is just opening up the possibility of selling bitcoin in the future to pay the dividends. And yes of course they are going to keep buying bitcoin, but they may in the future also from time to time sell a little bitcoin to make dividend payments. Right now they are already loaded up on at least a couple billion dollars in cash to pay dividends, which can pay off the dividends for the next probably 3 or so years (edit: ah i see in a quote in the OP's post it mentions they have about 18 months worth, not 3 years). But he is saying that they also have the option of selling bitcoin in the future to pay dividends, as an alternative to selling stock to pay the dividends. This was always going to be the problem with the dividend scheme. It never made financial sense. They don't make much profit and there is no way they can pay the dividends with their profits, so this was always going to obviously be an unnecessary and unwanted financial obligation for them that would have to either be paid with from stock sales (which could have otherwise gone to bitcoin purchases) or from selling bitcoin. I have never understood why they started doing these dividend shares when they could have just stuck to selling the regular stock to make bitcoin purchases. They really didn't think this through. I cringe every time I read that they sold more dividend shares to buy bitcoin, such a bad strategy for a company literally named Strategy lol. They really need to stop selling dividend shares. And if anything they should sell a bunch of bitcoin (once bitcoin is back in a bull run at new ATHs) to buy back all the dividend shares they've already sold or I guess as many as are up for sale in the market, and reduce their permanent financial obligation there as much as possible. But anyway, since they already have plenty of cash to pay dividends, if they do choose to sell a little bit of bitcoin to pay dividends that would at earliest be starting next year. But for sure long term they've gotta rectify the situation because it makes no financial sense to have dividends eat away at their bitcoin haul a tiny bit annually, or otherwise have it dilute the stock annually from selling stock to cover it.
1 Reply Quote Share
Posts: 39 · Reputation: 190
#9Jul 26, 2020, 08:50 AM
Well that's part of investment cycle and it just shows that no individual or institutions will going to hold their Bitcoin forever. They have obligations to pay attention that's why its not surprising if they came on that point thinking about selling some parts of their Bitcoin holdings. That signals that there's a shift and people need to pay attention on their actions, then don' easily believe on statements made by those institution or else they will be easily manipulated.
3 Reply Quote Share
defi_2017Senior Member
Posts: 224 · Reputation: 892
#10Jul 28, 2020, 11:12 AM
I’m finding it harder and harder to believe him, because this isn’t the first time he’s done something like this. Although, on the one hand, I hope his strategy succeeds, because that will benefit us Bitcoin holders, on the other hand, I’m not happy about him accumulating more and more Bitcoin. At the end of the day, it amounts to centralisation.
3 Reply Quote Share
pixel2014Hero Member
Posts: 857 · Reputation: 4132
#11Jul 28, 2020, 01:46 PM
I do not know if he is going to change his mind, but for now he is not planing to continuing accumulating bitcoin. Strategy has bought 818334 BTC, but Michael Saylor plan is to buy 1 million BTC and the company is getting closer to the price. This bear market is still an opportunity for the company to buy more coins. In the next few years, they will make more profit from it.
2 Reply Quote Share
tony69Senior Member
Posts: 287 · Reputation: 1054
#12Jul 28, 2020, 05:05 PM
There is something I am not getting right here; let say they said they bought bitcoin at an average of $75537 and currently the price of bitcoin is around ~81k. Hence, I would like to know where they incur those loses if the price of bitcoin has risen back above their initial entry point where did they incurred those loses? If they said sold some of their possession around $65k, then this could be true that they are into loses and therefore things should be shared accordingly in way it wouldn't mislead the audience and the readers.
2 Reply Quote Share
calmaltFull Member
Posts: 98 · Reputation: 655
#13Jul 28, 2020, 05:39 PM
You know bitcoin was below $70000 in first quarter (Q1) of this year, that was the losses that it is talked about. The loss is not for the Q2 and it is neither a general loss but just only the Q1 loss. Presently the company is making money already again as bitcoin price is increasing and it is part of the profit that Saylor is talking about that he will deduct.
3 Reply Quote Share
wolf_2016Full Member
Posts: 36 · Reputation: 303
#14Jul 28, 2020, 07:06 PM
I guess that could be viewed by some as the one plus side of their bad decision to get into this dividend scheme. For people who don't want Strategy to own so much of the bitcoin supply, having to pay out these high dividends will definitely limit the amount of bitcoin they own, whether by forcing them to sell bitcoin annually in the future or forcing them to dilute stock with stock sales to pay the dividends, stock sales that could have gone to buying more bitcoin. And if they keep selling dividend shares for bitcoin purchases, the annual financial obligation just continues to grow. Eventually they may get to the point where their bitcoin supply stays roughly steady, selling some bitcoin each year to pay dividends while roughly buying back that much bitcoin as well, which seems kinda silly buying back what they sell, but that is the situation that they will eventually get to because of this dividend scheme. Would have made infinitely more sense for them to have never done this dividend scheme and instead one day sold some bitcoin to fund some actual business development to try to grow their company (or bought other more profitable companies) turning their actual business into an engine for bitcoin accumulation rather than always having to dilute stock for bitcoin accumulation. I don't have a problem with them owning a ton of bitcoin, but I wish the reason their bitcoin accumulation would be slowing down would be because loads of other large corporations did the obvious and would have started adding bitcoin to their balance sheets by now, thus raising the price and making it harder for Strategy to keep accumulating so much. Unfortunately that has not started to happen yet even with that second wave of corporate buying that happened from like spring 2024 through summer 2025. So I guess I'm fine with them self-limiting how much Bitcoin they will get by creating these obligations for themselves. I'm more concerned that a company that holds so much of the bitcoin supply could make such a bad counterproductive financial decision as getting into this dividend scheme in the first place. But who knows, maybe the whole point was to eventually reach a bitcoin horde equilibrium where they can keep telling investors they are buying bitcoin but their stash doesn't change because they also have to regularly sell bitcoin to pay the dividends, i dunno.
3 Reply Quote Share
darklordSenior Member
Posts: 226 · Reputation: 1417
#15Jul 30, 2020, 01:51 PM
Until now, I still see the amount of Bitcoin belonging to Strategy unchanged, which is 818,334 BTC. it's just that I see that this month the Strategy company has not yet bought Bitcoin again since the last time on April 27, 2026 yesterday. Usually Strategy Companies accumulate Bitcoin four times a month, for some reason this month they haven't bought it, they usually buy it every Monday. But on Monday they did not do so. Actually, I was also worried about the news, considering that there was a candle that seemed to indicate a downward direction in the price of Bitcoin in the 1D TimeFrame. Plus going into the weekend I am usually more careful to make trades when the weekend comes, let's see from tomorrow what will happen. I'm going to mark this post, written when the price of Bitcoin was still $80,000.
0 Reply Quote Share
node_2020Full Member
Posts: 67 · Reputation: 469
#16Jul 30, 2020, 02:27 PM
His Company's buying DCA strategy has been working quite fine for them, and it doesn't really matter if they sold now and buy back at a higher prices in as much as they will sell at another higher average price other than where they bought initially, the goal are still being met if they offset to settle their dividends at when due and at a profitable price too.
3 Reply Quote Share
wolf_2016Full Member
Posts: 36 · Reputation: 303
#17Jul 30, 2020, 05:40 PM
They don't buy every single week, just most weeks. There is nothing unusual about them not buying this week.
4 Reply Quote Share
paulyieldSenior Member
Posts: 518 · Reputation: 1547
#18Jul 30, 2020, 08:03 PM
Couldn't agree more and it's time for people to stop being naive and thinks profit based company will hold bitcoin indefinitely. Strategy isn't just saylor but a full company structure so even if Saylor said he's not going to sell anything it's gonna be someone else who sell it.
2 Reply Quote Share
fullnodeSenior Member
Posts: 222 · Reputation: 1515
#19Jul 31, 2020, 06:33 PM
They could decrease or suspend those dividend payments if they wanted to. The reason for choosing to fulfill those obligations could be because demand is very strong for STRC from institutions and retail investors. There are various tokenized products backed by STRC. By keeping the dividend going they can continue to raise billions of dollars. For now, Strategy is on its way to accumulating 1 million BTC. At some point it might no longer be practical or even sustainable to keep amassing more of the supply without selling and they will have to find the right balance to keep going.
4 Reply Quote Share
1t5_omegaHero Member
Posts: 614 · Reputation: 3883
#20Jul 31, 2020, 08:47 PM
Absolutely false. That reverse DCA they’ve been doing has managed to yield a 1% CAGR after nearly six years of purchases. Until recently, the returns were negative. Some random person doing regular DCA just because his cousin told him to has gotten much better returns than Strategy (it would be about 40% CAGR according to Copilot AI).
2 Reply Quote Share

Related topics