First break at 13 weeks, Saylor pauses buying BTC, shifts focus to promoting preferred stock STRC

Original author: Deep Tide TechFlow

Strategy（formerly MicroStrategy）Executive Chairman Michael Saylor did not publish his usual “orange dot” Bitcoin-buying signal this Sunday. Instead, he fully promoted the company’s perpetual preferred stock STRC, which appears to have interrupted the company’s Bitcoin accumulation pace that has been going for 13 straight weeks since the end of last December. During this accumulation round, Strategy bought a total of about 90,831 BTC. The company currently holds 762,099 Bitcoins, with an average cost of about $75,694, while Bitcoin is currently trading at about $66,389. The unrealized loss on the books is substantial. The company’s 8-K filing on Monday will confirm whether purchases have truly been paused.

Strategy may have first interrupted its weekly Bitcoin accumulation pace since the end of last December.

According to BeInCrypto’s March 29 report, this Sunday Saylor did not post his signature “orange dot” (Orange Dot) purchase-tracking chart on the X platform. Instead, he shifted all attention to the company’s perpetual preferred stock Stretch (ticker STRC). Over the past 13 weeks, this signal has become a reliable “wind vane” for traders to judge whether Strategy is about to add more Bitcoin: a chart gets posted on Sunday, and on Monday morning the 8-K filing is submitted to confirm the purchase details.

The silence this time breaks, however, is an exceptionally aggressive accumulation cycle.

Buying 90,000 BTC in 13 Weeks, with the Final Week Already Sharply Cut

In this round of continuous accumulation that began at the end of last December, Strategy has bought a total of about 90,831 Bitcoins. According to the company’s official data dashboard, as of March 22, Strategy holds 762,099 BTC, with total cost of about $57.69 billion and an average purchase price of about $75,694.

But the accumulation pace has clearly faded in the last few weeks. According to CoinDesk, for the week of March 16 to 22, Strategy bought only 1,031 BTC, spending $76.6 million, with an average price of about $74,326. The purchases were all financed through an ordinary-share ATM (issued at market price). In the two weeks prior, the purchase volumes were 17,994 BTC (about $1.28 billion) and 22,337 BTC (about $1.57 billion), with the latter being the largest single-week purchase since 2026.

From raid-level purchases worth tens of billions of dollars, to “small change” purchases of $76.6 million, and then to a possible pause this week—the shrinking trajectory is clear to see.

Saylor Shifts the Spotlight to STRC, as the $42 Billion ATM Plan Just Lands

On Sunday, Saylor posted on X saying that STRC’s volatility over the past 30 days has been lower than all S&P 500 constituents and all major asset classes, while also providing an annualized dividend yield of 11.5%. In another post, he also argued that the annualized Bitcoin return required to maintain STRC’s dividends is only about 2.13%, far lower than Bitcoin’s historical performance.

The timing of this “pitch” was not coincidental. On March 23, Strategy just announced a new ATM issuance plan worth $42 billion: $21 billion for the company’s MSTR common stock, $21 billion for the STRC preferred stock, and an additional $2.1 billion in ATM capacity for the STRK preferred stock.

STRC is Strategy’s perpetual preferred stock launched in July 2025. Its par value is $100, dividends are paid monthly, and its interest rate is adjustable by ±0.25 percentage points each month. The current annualized dividend rate has risen to 11.5%, marking the seventh consecutive month of increases. Previously in February, CEO Phong Le said the company is shifting from relying on common-stock issuances to using preferred stock as its main financing tool for buying Bitcoin.

According to data cited by Yahoo Finance, about 80% of STRC holders are crypto retail investors, not institutional investors. In March 2026, Strategy raised about $1.2 billion through STRC’s ATM sales to buy Bitcoin, marking the first time preferred stock has surpassed common stock as the main source of financing. But this also means STRC’s financing capacity is directly tied to retail investors’ confidence in Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Falls into the $66,000 Range, Deep Unrealized Loss on Strategy’s Books

As the silence signal appeared, Bitcoin was in a slump. As of the time of writing, Bitcoin was quoted at around $67,000, down about 47% from its historical high of about $126,000 in October 2025. MSTR’s stock price fell about 76% to $77 from its peak in November 2024.

Based on a position of 762,099 BTC and an average price of $75,694, Strategy’s total cost for its Bitcoin holdings is about $57.69 billion. The market value calculated at the current price is about $50.5 billion, meaning the unrealized loss on the books exceeds $7 billion.

More broadly, enterprise Bitcoin purchases have become highly concentrated in just one company: Strategy. According to CryptoQuant’s report this week, in the past 30 days Strategy bought about 45,000 BTC, while all other corporate treasury companies combined bought only about 1,000 BTC. Strategy currently holds about 76% of all corporate-treasury Bitcoin, and other companies’ share of purchases has fallen from 95% at the peak to 2%. Marketed as a trend to “broaden the base of institutional holdings,” it has in reality evolved into a concentration risk for a single company.

The 8-K Filing on Monday Will Reveal the Answer

The absence of Sunday’s post does not necessarily mean purchases have been paused. Strategy has also seen signal changes in the past, and the company could quietly confirm new purchases in Monday’s 8-K filing. In addition, Strategy previously briefly paused purchases in early July 2025 and again in early October—both times were temporary adjustments.

But if Monday’s filing confirms there are no additional positions, that would be the first official interruption since December last year. It may also mark a turning point in Strategy’s financing strategy—the key transition moment from aggressive accumulation at all costs to a new financing engine centered on stabilizing STRC.