Strategy’s $193 Million STRC Buyback Dwarfs Its Latest Bitcoin Purchase
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October 19, 2026 3:18 pm
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Strategy bought more Bitcoin last week, but the headline number was not the Bitcoin purchase.
The company spent $22.1 million on 267 BTC while putting $193.1 million into repurchasing its STRC preferred stock. That is nearly nine dollars directed to STRC for every dollar used to add Bitcoin.
According to Decrypt, Strategy paid an average of $82,900 per Bitcoin between October 12 and October 18. The purchase lifted its holdings to 848,517 BTC, acquired for a total of $64.02 billion at an average price of $75,446 per coin.
The 267-BTC addition was close in size to the company’s purchase one week earlier. It was far smaller than the $142.7 million Bitcoin buy Strategy completed in the final week of September.
The preferred-stock transaction moved in the opposite direction. Strategy’s STRC repurchase was larger than its Bitcoin acquisition by roughly $171 million.
The company funded the two moves differently. MSTR share sales supplied nearly all the money for Bitcoin, while cash on the balance sheet funded the STRC repurchase.
Michael Saylor teased the move a day before the disclosure with a characteristically short message.
We found room for more orange. pic.twitter.com/XAgiEZbXgO
— Michael Saylor (@saylor) October 18, 2026
The mechanics matter. Strategy raised roughly $22 million by selling 140,872 shares of MSTR through its at-the-market program and added $100,000 of cash to complete the Bitcoin buy.
It did not sell preferred stock during the week.
The STRC transaction came from a different pocket. Strategy used $193.1 million of its general-purpose cash to repurchase 1,938,780 shares of the variable-rate preferred stock.
The company also raised the ceiling on its digital-credit securities repurchase program from $2 billion to $3 billion. After the latest purchases, $1.16 billion remained available as of October 18.
Its separate authorization for MSTR common-stock repurchases still had $1 billion available.
Strategy confirmed the figures directly, including the scale of its Bitcoin holdings and liquid-dollar assets.
Strategy has repurchased $193M of $STRC and acquired 267 $BTC. As of 10/18/26, we hold 848,517 BTC and $5.3B of USD Assets. We have also increased the size of our Digital Credit Securities Repurchase Program from $2.0B to $3.0B. $MSTRhttps://t.co/4o0bQBaTb0
— Strategy (@Strategy) October 19, 2026
The balance-sheet picture is becoming more complicated than a simple weekly Bitcoin counter. Strategy also used $45.5 million from its USD Reserve to cover dividends and interest. Its reserve stood at $4.83 billion, while general-purpose USD Cash fell from $640.5 million to $447.3 million in one week.
That does not mean the Bitcoin strategy has changed. The company is still accumulating, and its average purchase price remains below the price paid for the latest batch.
But the capital allocation shows that preferred-stock support is now a major part of the playbook.
The next pressure point is MSCI. New index rules could make companies whose balance sheets are dominated by one asset ineligible for widely tracked indexes after November 30.
If Strategy is included on the affected list, passive funds could be forced to sell MSTR shares.
For investors, the week’s real message is straightforward: Strategy is still buying Bitcoin, but it is spending far more right now to manage the securities wrapped around that Bitcoin treasury.
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