Morning Minute: Saylor's Strategy Sells Bitcoin for Second Week in a Row

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors are slightly red down 1%; BTC at $64.4k
• ETFs flip to outflows breaking 5-day inflow streak
• Standard Chartered sets $200 target for LINK, cites tokenized asset growth
• Pump Fun hits new local high of $10M in weekly fees as social trading launches
• FWA ecosystem sees 2 new projects launch on top of it, token hits new local high

₿ Strategy Sells Bitcoin for a Third Week, Grows Cash Pile

Strategy sold 1,690 BTC for $108.6 million last week, according to an 8-K filed on Monday, trimming its stack to 840,447 coins from the 842,138 held a week earlier.

The BTC was sold at an average of $64,262, about $11,100 below its $75,385 cost basis, so once again, Michael Saylor’s firm is selling Bitcoin at a loss. It hasn’t bought any since June, and its holdings now sit 6,916 coins below the June peak. The funds from the BTC sales were all used for buybacks of its preferred stock STRC, which rebounded to $95.

Separately, Strategy sold $653.1 million of MSTR common stock, more than double the prior week. It now holds $4.65 billion in cash reserves, up from $4 billion. That reserve covers what the company calls 2.7 years of “USD Duration,” meaning it has roughly two and a half years of runway to meet its $1.76 billion in annual preferred dividends and debt interest without selling another coin or issuing another share.

Notably, MSTR stock has held up remarkably well through months of relentless dilution and coin sales. Strategy has sold roughly $1.9 billion of common stock since July 1 while buying zero Bitcoin. In theory, this should have crushed the share price. Yet MSTR bottomed at $81.81 in late June and has steadied since and even rebounded, up 20% off the lows and holding around $100/share.

And now it seems Saylor and Strategy are in a better position than they’ve been for months. They’ve got $4.65B in cash, STRC is approaching par and MSTR is stable. There is no blow-up risk ahead. It appears they’ll keep selling BTC until they get STRC back to par, and that’s when things get interesting and Strategy changes from being a headwind to a tailwind…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are slightly red with HYPE leading; BTC -1% at $64.4k; ETH -1% at $1,893; SOL -1% at $76; HYPE +2% at $55.25
• Top alt movers include CRV (+9%), LIT (+9%), LINK (+5%) and MNT (+4%)
• Oil +4% at $82; Gold +1% at $4,450
• Stock futures are slightly green; DOW +0.1%, Nasdaq +0.5%
• BlackRock has cut the BTC to IBIT in-kind conversion down to $1M from $25M, making it easier for spot holders to convert to ETF holdings
• Vitalik Buterin said Ethereum is betting its future on quantum security and AI, publishing an updated “Strawmap” that puts post-quantum cryptography, privacy, and AI-assisted formal verification at the center of the network’s roadmap, and arguing that verifying the protocol is safe “is only feasible with modern AI tools”
• Standard Chartered set a $200 Chainlink price target by 2030, a roughly 25x gain from around $8 today, arguing that tokenized assets reaching $4 trillion by 2028 and DeFi growing 37-fold will drive Chainlink’s fees up about 25 times, given it already secures over $110 billion and covers ~70% of oracle-dependent DeFi value
• Tether’s USDT supply has shrunk by $4B over the past 60 days
• Coinbase opened UK derivatives trading with up to 50x leverage, rolling out perpetual futures to eligible British retail traders

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were mixed; DOGE +1%, SHIB -4%, PEPE even, PENGU -2%, TRUMP +1%, BONK -5%
• Robinhood chain tokens grinded up another 10-20%; Cashcat +10% to $163M, Stonkbroker +14% to $55M and HMM +25% to $9M; UP +400% to $6M was top mover
• Solana leaders included TOAD (+20%), Alon (+200%) and Manlet (+20x); Stonk also jumped 33% to $11M and briefly hit a new ATH at $15M

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Pump.fun hit $10.03 million in weekly fees and burned another $5.02 million of $PUMP, flipping Hyperliquid on 30-day revenue as ecosystem volume rebounded to $2.97 billion, its best week since January
• Fomo App launched clans, allowing users to trade in groups up to 50 in size
• Stonkfun integrated into the Fomo App, allowing fomo users to see if tokens were initiated via the stonkfun launchpdad

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly flat; Punks -1% at 32 ETH, BAYC +2% at 8.17 ETH, Pudgy -1% at 3.92 ETH; Stonkbrokers +3% to 13.4 ETH
• Cash Cats (+27%) and Monkeyhood (+58%) led top movers
• The FWA ecosystem saw 2 new projects, one that powers grouping buys (spins) together in MegaRip and another by 0xQuit that allows pooling of deposits (NFTs and ETH) in FWAPHouse (FWA at $29M)
• Stonkbrokers announced a partnership with veDex UP, which will power The Stonk Exchange and the Stonk Launcher (UP +400% to $6M)