MicroStrategy Authorizes $1.25B Bitcoin Sales to Cover Dividend Costs

Published by James Harris on June 30, 2026June 30, 2026

Strategy’s new capital framework cleared its first market test on Monday, with MSTR jumping 12.6% to $92.68 and its STRC preferred stock gaining roughly 10% to around $83.67. Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer kept his Buy rating and a $570 price target, implying the stock needs to run more than 500% from current levels to get there.

The framework itself, disclosed in an SEC filing, is a meaningful structural shift. Strategy authorized up to $1.25 billion in Bitcoin sales, raised its STRC dividend to 12%, approved a $2 billion stock buyback program, and gave itself board-level permission to sell Bitcoin from its 847,363 BTC treasury. Palmer framed this as putting the capital machine into “reverse” during stress periods, meaning the firm is no longer a one-directional buyer regardless of conditions. That is a real change. Strategy previously sold just 32 Bitcoin in May, a roughly $2.5 million transaction that already broke Michael Saylor’s long-standing pledge never to sell, and the market absorbed that without collapse. The question is whether a much larger, more systematic program carries the same result.

CryptoQuant’s head of research Julio Moreno thinks the answer is no, and his reasoning is structurally uncomfortable: the moment Strategy signals a price level it will defend, that level becomes a target for sellers.

The pressure behind this framework is not abstract. Strategy faces roughly $2.8 billion in preferred dividend obligations over the next two years, and its dividend coverage window compressed from more than seven years to about 14 months in just six months as annual preferred dividend costs grew from $300 million to $1.2 billion. That trajectory is what forced the framework into existence, not a voluntary strategic evolution. The stock rally on Monday reflects relief that management acknowledged the problem formally, but Moreno’s warning applies specifically to what comes next: if Bitcoin pulls back toward Strategy’s cost basis and the company actually begins selling, the market’s reaction to a disclosed defense line will be a harder test than anything Monday’s session offered. Preferred stockholders watching this have a different risk profile than common equity holders, and the STRC rally, while real, does not resolve the underlying math.

CEO Phong Le described the shift as a transition from pure capital issuance to active capital structure management on both sides. Whether that language holds up depends entirely on Bitcoin’s price trajectory and whether Strategy’s new tools get used before they need to be.