Bitcoin has been rising during a month that has historically been bearish for the asset. Strategy, the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder, bought 950 Bitcoin for nearly $76 million over the past week, according to its latest financial disclosure. The purchase marked the company’s first Bitcoin acquisition in roughly three weeks and lifted Strategy’s total holdings to 846,000 Bitcoin. It coincided with the price of Bitcoin surging more than 6% over the past 24 hours to nearly $86,000, and led to a jump in Strategy shares of nearly 9% to $167.
The rise in Strategy’s share price was also helped by the company spending $174 million to repurchase STRC, its dividend-paying preferred shares. Strategy, led by the flamboyant billionaire Michael Saylor, is an outsize player in the Bitcoin market as it holds around 4% of the total supply.
The latest rise in Bitcoin’s price has extended the cryptocurrency’s recovery from a yearlong bear market. Bitcoin fell as low as $58,000 in June, roughly 53% below its $125,000 price last October.
The volatility has directly affected Strategy, whose vast Bitcoin holdings have made its stock a proxy for the cryptocurrency. Saylor has long championed a “never sell your Bitcoin” mantra, but in the past four months his company has sold Bitcoin four times.
As Bitcoin’s decline squeezed the company’s finances, Strategy created STRC last year to raise cash from investors for more Bitcoin purchases. The preferred shares pay investors regular dividends. As the cryptocurrency rebounded over the past month, Strategy returned to buying, making two purchases. Its latest STRC buyback also reduced the company’s future payments to investors.
Strategy’s fortunes remain closely tied to Bitcoin’s price, but its return to buying suggests the company sees enough support for the cryptocurrency’s recovery to resume accumulating it, Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at the financial technology firm IG Group, told Fortune.
“When you want to buy into a rising market, what August and September have given you is the potential for that to continue in a more sustained fashion. That’s just what Saylor and the rest of the team really want to see,” he said.
Strategy’s latest purchase was modest compared with some of its earlier acquisitions. Beauchamp said the smaller buy does not necessarily point to a particular concern, but may reflect a strategy of adding Bitcoin gradually as its price climbs.
The Bessent effect
Bitcoin’s renewed buying pressure came in mid-August after the U.S. Treasury announced that it would double purchases of older long-term government bonds. The cryptocurrency had spent months in a downturn as investors focused on faster-moving themes such as artificial intelligence, but worries about government bonds, rising yields, and inflation revived Bitcoin’s appeal as an alternative asset, Beauchamp explained.
“You always need a narrative to kickstart something,” he said. “With Bessent’s moves back to treasuries, suddenly it seemed like this was sort of the dream scenario for Bitcoin.”
The rally gathered pace as markets digested the Federal Reserve’s latest interest-rate hike. Crypto markets have often struggled when the Fed raises rates because higher borrowing costs can reduce the money investors devote to riskier assets. When Fed Chair Kevin Warsh announced a quarter-point rate increase on Sept. 16, Bitcoin initially fell to about $75,600, erasing gains it had made earlier that month. But the decline proved short-lived, and Bitcoin soon resumed its ascent.
Once the widely expected rate hike took place, “a more rational approach to the future applies,” with a key source of uncertainty out of the way, Beauchamp said.