Strategy (MSTR), the bitcoin treasury company formerly known as MicroStrategy, reported no bitcoin purchases or sales during the week of October 19 through 25, according to a company release, directing its cash instead toward the repurchase of $204.9 million of its STRC preferred stock.

The company continues to hold 848,517 BTC, acquired for a cumulative $64.02 billion at an average price of $75,446 per bitcoin, and it maintained a $4.83 billion cash reserve.

A Shift in the Funding Playbook

Michael Saylor's company built its treasury into the largest corporate bitcoin holdings in the world through stock sales and convertible debt, using the proceeds to buy coins. That pattern has changed somewhat this year: Strategy has paused purchases several times and directed money toward buybacks of its preferred shares. Buybacks run that machinery in reverse: rather than selling securities to raise cash for coins, the company spends cash to retire preferred claims.

The pauses have varied in length, from a week when the company halted its bitcoin buys to a stretch in which it sold bitcoin after five weeks without buying.

In September, the company repurchased $176 million of STRC in one week and expanded its digital credit securities repurchase program from $1 billion to $2 billion — a program size roughly ten times the $204.9 million repurchased this week.

How STRC Buybacks Work

STRC is a preferred stock with a variable dividend, designed to trade near its $100 face value. When the shares fall below that level, as they have during recent market swings, buying them back shrinks the preferred claim. Retiring $100 of stated value for $86.52 cuts the claim by a larger amount than the cash spent, which lifts net bitcoin per share — a mechanic Bitcoin Magazine has examined in detail. That means per-share bitcoin accretion can come from the capital structure itself, even in a week with no new coin purchases.

Bitcoin traded near $80,000 on Monday, October 26, after slipping below that level in early Asian hours. A weekend selloff pushed the price into the low $79,000s, a level not seen in more than a month.

Strategy's cost of $75,446 sits below that price, so the company's holdings show a paper gain of around $3.9 billion. The $4.83 billion reserve covers preferred dividends and debt interest — obligations that recur regardless of bitcoin's price — according to company reporting.

Strategy's buyback capacity depends on the preferred stock trading below par and on cash from common stock sales, a funding mix that has shifted toward stock sales this year.

The company has offered no timetable for resuming bitcoin buys. Its weekly releases are where any change would first appear, alongside the two inputs behind buyback capacity: STRC's price relative to its $100 face value and the pace of common stock sales.

This article was written by Micah Zimmerman and first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.