Analytics firm CryptoQuant has urged Strategy, the company formerly known as MicroStrategy, to halt its near-constant bitcoin purchases and rebuild its cash reserves, arguing that founder Michael Saylor's leveraged accumulation model has left the firm financially overextended, according to a report carried by CoinDesk.
This is CryptoQuant's analysis, not investment advice or established fact. But the argument lands as bitcoin trades near $62,600, part of the broader retreat to roughly $62,000 that Boursel has been tracking.
What Strategy is
Strategy is, in effect, a leveraged bitcoin-acquisition vehicle. Rather than running mainly as a software business, the company raises money by issuing stock and debt and uses the proceeds to buy bitcoin. As of June 22 it held about 847,363 BTC at an average cost of roughly $66,385 each, per The Block's treasury tracker — a total outlay near $33.1 billion. With bitcoin below that average price, CryptoQuant estimates the position sits on an unrealized loss of about $10.6 billion, with everything bought since 2024 underwater.
The mNAV problem
For years, Strategy's stock traded at a premium to the value of the bitcoin it owns — a gap captured by a metric called mNAV, the market value relative to net asset value. When the stock trades above 1.0x, the company can issue new shares to buy more bitcoin and actually increase the bitcoin backing each existing share. That premium financed the accumulation flywheel.
That math has reversed. Strategy's stock recently traded at an mNAV near 0.86x — a discount, not a premium. Below 1.0x, selling new shares to buy bitcoin becomes dilutive, eroding the bitcoin per share for existing holders. The engine that powered the model now works against it.
Cash and dividend strain
CryptoQuant's central concern is liquidity. It says Strategy's annualized dividend obligations on its preferred shares have ballooned from roughly $300 million to $1.2 billion over six months, while its dollar reserve fell about 38% since the start of 2026, Cryptopolitan reported. That shrank dividend coverage from more than seven years to roughly 14 months. The firm argues Strategy needs about $2.8 billion in reserves — covering 24 months — versus the roughly $1.1 billion it held in mid-June. Strain is visible in the company's STRC preferred shares, which CryptoQuant notes fell to about $82.50, some 17.5% below their $100 par value, yielding around 11.5%.
Forced-selling risk — and the counterpoint
The leverage risk is that obligations could one day force Strategy to sell bitcoin at a loss to raise cash. CryptoQuant cautions that any forced sale "would crystallize large losses," but adds that such sales are unlikely soon, because the company can instead raise dividends or issue new shares to support the preferred stock.
Notably, Strategy appears to have already moved in CryptoQuant's direction — making the warning, as one outlet put it, "two weeks late." In the week of June 22 the company bought just 520 BTC for about $35 million while raising $335.5 million selling common stock and routing $300 million into its reserve, lifting it to roughly $1.4 billion. Across recent weeks it sold more stock than it spent on bitcoin — a marked shift from the buy-only posture Saylor had made central to the company's identity, which the firm frames as protecting the credit quality of its preferred shares.
