Sold at $64,262, bought back at $80,318
Between August 3 and 9, Strategy sold 1,690 Bitcoin at an average of $64,262, raising $108.6 million that went into repurchasing its STRC preferred stock. Three weeks later, between August 24 and 30, it bought 4,603 Bitcoin at an average of $80,318, paid for by selling MSTR common stock through its at-the-market program. Critics have a name for that sequence: buy high, sell low. The two flows were separate (in the very week of the sale, MSTR stock sales also raised $653.1 million for the USD reserve), but a balance sheet does not care which dollar paid for what. The company let coins go near $64,000 and replaced them near $80,000, and common shareholders carry that gap in the form of less Bitcoin per share than if the coins had never left.
The average cost is a reporting number, not a tax number
Strategy reports one average purchase price for the whole stack, $75,385 as of August 9. For tax purposes that average does not exist: the stack is hundreds of lots bought at very different prices, and US guidance lets a holder choose which units it sells, provided each unit can be specifically identified and its acquisition date, basis and sale documented (otherwise first in, first out applies). The filings show the choice at work. In the second quarter the company sold about 1,395 Bitcoin for $83.2 million, and its 10-Q carries those coins at a cost of $168.1 million: about $120,500 each, sold near $59,700. The August sale reads the same way. Reported aggregate cost fell by roughly $156 million as 1,690 coins left, about $92,000 a coin, and the average cost of what remained slipped from $75,419 to $75,385.
The loss has a value, but not a guaranteed one
Realized losses on Bitcoin are capital losses, and the 10-Q records a $24.4 million deferred tax asset for the loss on the second-quarter sales (about $85 million against cost). A US corporation can carry a net capital loss back 3 years and forward 5, but only against capital gains. The wash-sale rule, which disallows a loss when the same asset is bought back within 30 days, is written for stock and securities, and the IRS treats Bitcoin as property: the company can book the loss without stepping out of Bitcoin for a month. The catch sits in the same filing. That $24.4 million, with a $4.12 billion deferred tax asset on the stack's unrealized loss, is offset in full by a $4.60 billion valuation allowance, because management judges it more likely than not that these assets will not be realized.
Why an individual holder cannot copy the move
Private investors play under different rules, and not only in the US. In France, article 150 VH bis of the tax code computes the gain on a crypto sale with a formula spread across the whole portfolio rather than by chosen lot, and a loss offsets only gains of the same kind in the same year. A French individual who sold near $64,000 and bought back near $80,000 would have no expensive lot to pick and no loss to carry into later years. For Strategy, the same round trip does two jobs at once: it raises cash to manage the capital structure and turns part of the loss into a potential tax asset.
What Signal21 takes from it
None of this makes the trade free. The coins sold are gone, Bitcoin per share is lower than it would have been, and the tax code reduces the cost of the round trip without erasing it. The benefit is certain in law and uncertain in value: it is worth something only if Strategy has taxable gains to absorb it, which in practice means Bitcoin rising far enough above the cost of the coins it holds. Like the rest of the model, the tax angle pays only if Bitcoin performs. Our views on the equity are unchanged: the short-term view stays Neutral Range, the medium-term view remains Bearish Bias, and the long-term view stays Strong Bullish. This is market analysis, not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.