Saylor Says Strategy Must Be Able to Sell Bitcoin to Sustain Business Model

Strategy, the world’s largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, said it must be able to sell the cryptocurrency when needed to sustain its business model.

Michael Saylor, the company’s executive chairman, made the remarks in an interview with Cointelegraph at BTC Prague in Prague, Czech Republic, on June 13. Strategy needs the ability to sell Bitcoin if necessary to continue issuing dividend-paying securities and Bitcoin-based credit products, he said.

The comments followed a June 1 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in which Strategy disclosed that it had sold 32 Bitcoin. It was the company’s first Bitcoin sale since 2022. After that disclosure, some industry participants and observers viewed the move as a possible shift from Saylor’s longstanding position that the company would never sell Bitcoin.

Saylor pushed back on that interpretation. If the company’s policy were never to sell Bitcoin, its credit would have no value and its stock would have no value, he said. Strategy’s business is selling digital credit, which is backed by capital, and Bitcoin is that capital.

He described Strategy’s preferred stock product, STRC, as a representative digital credit instrument. The company raises funds by issuing preferred shares and convertible notes backed by its Bitcoin holdings, then uses the proceeds to buy more Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is the digital transformation of capital, while STRC is the digital transformation of credit, Saylor said. Digital credit products can offer yields of as much as 8%, he added.

He also said the digital credit market could become the next $1 trillion opportunity in finance, helping draw billions of dollars into the Bitcoin ecosystem.