How Strategy Used Half Its Equity to Buy 225,000 Bitcoin in 2025

The year Strategy went on a bitcoin shopping spree

In 2025, Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) embarked on a buying binge so enormous it scooped up more newly issued bitcoin than the miners produced that year. Over the course of the year the company added roughly 225,027 BTC to its coffers, bringing its total stash to about 672,497 BTC — and yes, that’s larger than the estimated post‑halving issuance of roughly 164,000 coins. Not subtle. Very hungry.

But while the coin pile grew, the share price did not. The stock slid hard — losing roughly half its value — and finished the year with a market capitalization of about $48.3 billion. By contrast, the company’s bitcoin reserve was being valued at around $59.2 billion. On paper that looks like a bargain bin situation, but the market often sees more than the raw coin math.

What happened is a classic tale of leverage, dilution and arbitrageurs changing the rules. For a long time the stock traded at a premium because some traders treated it like a levered play on bitcoin’s volatility: buy the shares, hedge with futures, and capture the spread. In 2025 that script flipped. Strategy repeatedly issued shares into the market (at‑the‑market equity offerings) to fund bitcoin purchases, swamping the premium and forcing sophisticated traders to rethink their positions. The trade went from “buy the stock, short the coin” to “buy the coin via ETFs, short the stock,” and the result was pressure on the equity.

Mechanics, risks, and how 2026 might play out

Several balance‑sheet and market mechanics explain why the stock sold off even as the bitcoin hoard grew. Short sellers piled on: short interest reached about 29.14 million shares, roughly 11.08% of the public float, signaling a sizable group betting the equity won’t sustain its previous premium. At the same time implied volatility priced the stock like a rollercoaster — noisy, risky, and not a calm holding company.

Digging deeper, the plain market cap vs. coin stack comparison misses senior claims. When you factor in the company’s debt and convertible notes used to fund purchases, Enterprise Value was nearer to $62.3 billion at year‑end — about $3 billion more than the coin pile’s headline value. That pushes the story from a neat “$11 billion discount” to a more nuanced one where debt holders get paid first and equity sits on a much thinner margin. The market‑to‑net‑asset ratio ended up close to 1.05, which is not exactly a screaming buy once you include leverage.

The accumulation playbook itself is vulnerable. Strategy’s approach relies on issuing shares via ATM offerings and claiming a KPI called “BTC Yield” — essentially how fast bitcoin per share grows. That only works if the company can sell equity at favorable prices. With the share price down more than 50% year‑over‑year, the firm now needs to issue substantially more stock to raise the same dollars, diluting existing holders faster than the bitcoin stack increases per share. In short: the denominator (shares) is growing faster than the numerator (BTC).

Management has so far stuck to the script — building a cash buffer of over $2 billion and saying it won’t sell bitcoin to service debt or buy back shares. That commitment keeps the accumulation story alive, but it also keeps the company exposed to the market mechanics that punished the stock in 2025.

So what could flip the script in 2026? If bitcoin rockets toward something like $110,000, the math becomes uncomfortable for shorts and attractive for value players: the gap between the coin pile and the debt‑adjusted equity value would widen, pushing a repricing and possibly restoring a premium — especially if the company slows issuance. But if bitcoin languishes in an $80k–$90k range, ongoing issuance in a flat market will continue to erode bitcoin per share and keep skeptics happy that the stock behaves more like a noisy, high‑fee tracker fund than a scarce asset vehicle.

In plain terms: Strategy managed to amass a mountain of bitcoin by selling pieces of itself. That worked spectacularly to grow the stack, but it also turned the equity into a highly leveraged, issuance‑dependent instrument. The next big move will come down to bitcoin’s price action, the company’s appetite for issuing more shares, and whether the market eventually rewards scarcity or punishes dilution.

Either way, it was an audacious year on the corporate balance sheet rollercoaster — equal parts courage, math, and madness. Buckle up for 2026.