If you held a Strategy common share through the third quarter of 2026, the company added bitcoin, nearly doubled its cash reserve for dividends and interest, and your share lost about 11.8 percent of the bitcoin behind it.
All three come from Strategy's own SEC filings. So does the reason.
Between 1st July and 30th September 2026 Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, raised $5.41 billion from new common shares. The filings send $512.4 million of it, 9.5 percent, straight to bitcoin.
Most of the rest went first to dollars and preferred stock. $1.35 billion to that reserve, $1.61 billion to cash and a new pool called USD Cash, $578 million to buying back STRC preferred shares and $103 million to STRC dividends. Another $1.25 billion, raised in three July weeks, has no itemised use in the weekly filings.
One week shows it plainly. From 17th to 23rd August Strategy raised $2.01 billion and bought no bitcoin.
Earlier they sold 5,553 bitcoin to pay dividends, refill the reserve and buy back preferred stock. By 20th September Strategy led by Phong Le & Mike had bought exactly 5,553 back, for $96.9 million more than the sales raised.
Across the quarter it spent $1.38 billion buying back STRC and $588.1 million buying bitcoin. The average price it paid for STRC climbed from $86.53 in late July to $99.51 by early October, inside the $99 to $100 range its 10-Q names as the target. The filings cannot show whether its own buying did the lifting.
Strategy both sold new shares and traded bitcoin in four third-quarter weeks. In all four, each new share raised less than the bitcoin already behind an existing share was worth, 0.69 to 0.97 times, at the company's own prices. Even spending every dollar on bitcoin would have cut bitcoin per share in those weeks. That counts bitcoin only, on ordinary shares, and Strategy's diluted measure can differ.
None of this shows management chose badly or that shareholders lost value. Cash is an asset, buying back preferred stock removes claims that rank ahead of common shareholders, and dollars held today can buy bitcoin later. It shows a raise is not a bid.
On 9th October Strategy filed clarifications and corrections to a video Michael Saylor had reposted about its 28th October vote on daily $STRC
dividends. The video told holders of STRC and three other preferred stocks it was time to vote. The company's note says only holders of its common stock on 25th September can, and its proxy shows Saylor with 32.9 percent of that voting power on 15 September.
I put 70 percent on an 8-K reporting shareholder approval by 2nd November, and 65 percent on an 8-K reporting at least 850,000 bitcoin by then. Both get scored in the November issue of my Monthly Crypto article.
Fed and ETF numbers invite the same misreading. Wednesday bank reserves fell $88.2 billion on 30th September, as on every quarter-end Wednesday since 2009, then rose $140.4 billion within a week. In the June quarter, 76.8 percent of the bitcoin added for new IBIT shares, by value, arrived in kind from trading firms. Neither, on its own, measures new buying of bitcoin.
Issue 01 of Chain of Custody PRO, my monthly on bitcoin and crypto, rebuilds the quarter filing by filing, with six charts and every source linked. No price targets. No trading signals. NFA / DYOR!
