The price of loyalty: What Bitcoin storage costs Strategy

Traders Union
All News
Editors' Picks
How much bitcoin storage costs Strategy

The price of loyalty

As of November 2025, Strategy holds 641,205 BTC — more than $66 billion. But maintaining those holdings costs the company around $689 million every year.

Loading...

The tweet was deleted by the author.

But we saved everything 🙂.

These funds go toward servicing debt, paying dividends, maintaining infrastructure, and covering operating expenses. And the more BTC Strategy buys, the greater its financial obligations become.

Strategy tries to avoid paying taxes to preserve its shareholders’ return of capital status, but its financial model resembles an endless loop: in order not to sell Bitcoin, the company must continuously raise new capital.

How a DAT finances the infinite HODL

Unlike traditional companies, a Digital Asset Treasury doesn’t earn profits from selling products or services — its main “asset” lives on the blockchain. Therefore, to buy more BTC while selling none, Strategy continuously issues new shares — both common and preferred (STRK, STRF, STRD, STRC, STRE).

Dividends on these shares reach 8–10.5%, adding hundreds of millions of dollars in new obligations each year. If the company continues to raise capital at the same scale in 2026, its annual expenses could exceed $1 billion.

All this while, Strategy’s actual revenue for the first nine months of 2025 amounted to only $355 million, with most of its profits coming from unrealized Bitcoin price appreciation. This mechanism works as long as optimism around Bitcoin — and around Michael Saylor himself — remains high. But any market cooldown or loss of confidence could turn this perpetual cycle into a financial trap.

According to Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise, companies like Strategy are a real test for the market. He believes that true DATs must take on complex challenges: engaging in decentralized finance, lending, or yield-generating strategies, and creating financial instruments based on their assets. Not all of these ideas are safe, but if executed well, the market rewards them.

Loading...

The tweet was deleted by the author.

But we saved everything 🙂.

Hougan calls Saylor’s company a model DAT. Strategy holds $64 billion in Bitcoin against $8 billion in debt — roughly $56 billion in Bitcoin equity.

“Try raising $56 billion in equity to buy Bitcoin without debt — it’s incredibly difficult,” Hougan said.

This unique structure allows Strategy to issue convertible bonds or preferred shares to keep buying Bitcoin without diluting shareholder value. As a result, its MSTR shares often trade at a premium to their net asset value (mNAV) — investors pay more because they believe in the company.

When faith is worth more than gold

Over the past year, the number of companies adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets has grown dramatically: in the third quarter of 2025 alone, Bitwise recorded 48 new Digital Asset Treasuries. In total, there are now over 200 such companies, collectively holding more than 1 million BTC.Despite the boom, most of these treasuries show only a short-lived effect: stock prices rise after the announcement of BTC or other crypto purchases, but quickly lose market interest. Strategy is an exception — its approach is built not on PR, but on calculated systemic risk.

Loading...

The tweet was deleted by the author.

But we saved everything 🙂.

Its model resembles an endless financial chess game: the company borrows, issues shares, pays dividends — yet never sells a single Bitcoin. That very loyalty has made it a legend among crypto investors.

Holding Bitcoin the way Strategy does is expensive, risky, and grand. The company now spends nearly $700 million a year simply to avoid pressing the “sell” button. And still, investors continue to buy its shares at a premium — because they believe that in the long run, victory belongs to those who know how to wait.

This material may contain third-party opinions, none of the data and information on this webpage constitutes investment advice according to our Disclaimer. While we adhere to strict Editorial Integrity, this post may contain references to products from our partners.