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Strategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) CEO Phong Le has rejected the idea that selling Bitcoin is out of the question for the company.
“We can sell Bitcoin and we would sell Bitcoin if we needed to to fund our dividend payments below 1 times mNAV,” Le said on an episode of the “What Bitcoin Did” podcast released last week.
He said Strategy’s ultimate goal was maximizing Bitcoin per share, adding that if the company traded below the net asset value of its Bitcoin holdings, it was more accretive to sell its Bitcoin to pay dividends. He, however, said this would be a last resort.
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Le’s remarks came ahead of similar comments from Strategy Chair Michael Saylor on Dec. 1 in a surprising shift from his “never sell your Bitcoin” messaging over the past few years.
“There are skeptics and cynics that have been of the opinion that we couldn’t or wouldn’t, or don’t have the will to sell Bitcoin in order to finance the dividends, and that sometimes becomes a negative short narrative,” Saylor said in a company update on Dec. 1. “I think it’s important for us to dispel this notion. Not only can the company sell Bitcoin in order to pay the dividends, the company can actually sell highly appreciated Bitcoin, pay the dividends and then continuously increase its Bitcoin holdings in Bitcoin every quarter forever.”
Saylor added that in the event Strategy needed to sell its Bitcoin to cover dividend payments, it would only have to sell “a very small fraction, about four tenths of one basis point” of its holdings.
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The pioneer Bitcoin treasury company most recently held 650,000 BTC worth $56.5 billion, by far the largest holdings of any corporate entity. The company accumulated this stash largely by issuing common stock to buy Bitcoin. It was able to do so without diluting the so-called BTC yield for users, as it traded well above the value of the Bitcoin it held.
However, its so-called mNAV has significantly compressed in recent months as the digital asset treasury trade has lost its luster with the emergence of several copycats. The metric most recently stood at 0.99, meaning the company is now valued below its Bitcoin holdings.
