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Michael Saylor gets into public back-and-forth with critics

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Michael Saylor gets into public back-and-forth with critics

Tempers are flaring as the bitcoin BTC$60,930.61 bear market deepens.

Strategy’s (MSTR) latest bitcoin purchase has sparked a public debate on X between Executive Chairman Michael Saylor and bitcoin advocate Matthew Kratter over whether the company’s most recent capital raise was accretive or dilutive for shareholders.

The disagreement centers on Strategy’s own bitcoin performance metric, BTC Yield, which is designed to track changes in bitcoin holdings per assumed diluted share. According to Strategy’s latest figures, BTC Yield fell from 13.0% on June 1 to 12.8% on June 8, after the company acquired an additional 1,550 BTC.

Kratter argued that the decline shows the transaction was dilutive on a bitcoin-per-share basis. Over the same period, Strategy’s bitcoin holdings rose from 843,706 BTC to 845,256 BTC, while assumed diluted shares outstanding increased from 382.756 million to 384.180 million. BTC Gain YTD also fell from 87,754 BTC to 86,328 BTC.

Saylor pushed back, saying BTC Yield is a narrow KPI that measures only bitcoin per share, not total shareholder accretion. Saylor said the transaction also added approximately $100 million of U.S. dollar reserves, taking the total USD reserve to $1 billion, making the deal accretive when both bitcoin and cash are included.

If viewed strictly through BTC Yield, the latest raise appears dilutive. But if cash reserves and broader balance-sheet effects are included, Saylor argues that the transaction improved shareholder value.

Others jumped in. “Notice they keep changing the rules to fit the financial alchemy they’re doing,” sniped Wazz. “First $BTC yield was boasted everywhere and plastered accross every buy announcement as the standard accretive metric. Now it’s a ‘narrow KPI’ which is irrelevant.”

“As a short seller, I’ve watched innumerable companies ‘move the goalposts,’ and try and focus the market on new metrics when old ones aren’t showing the story they want them to anymore,” wrote Quoth the Raven. “Sometimes, companies outright delete key performance indicators (KPIs) and use new ones.”

Lava Network Signs Tokenization Pact for Planned 40,000-Unit Caribbean Project

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Lava Network Signs Tokenization Pact for Planned 40,000-Unit Caribbean Project

The agreement with developer BHL Group is an early-stage memorandum of understanding, and the Alba Bay community is not slated to break ground until 2027

Lava Network, a blockchain infrastructure protocol, has signed a preliminary agreement to help design a tokenization sandbox for Alba Bay, a planned Caribbean residential development of more than 40,000 units. Lava said it is the protocol’s first real-world asset mandate.

BHL says the project will span nearly 40 million square meters, cost multiple billions of dollars and target construction starting in the first quarter of 2027.

The arrangement is a non-binding memorandum of understanding, and BHL Group, the developer, pays Lava nothing upfront, the company said in written answers to questions from The Defiant. No units have been tokenized and no infrastructure has been deployed yet.

LAVA, the protocol’s token, trades more than 90% below its 2024 peak and has a market cap of about $9 million, according to CoinGecko. Lava routes traffic for enterprise users including Fireblocks, NEAR, Arbitrum and Starknet.

The release announcing the partnership described a “regulatory sandbox” that would put every home, parcel and shared asset onchain. Lava described a “private, exploratory process between the parties” that’s fully aligned with existing legal and regulatory frameworks.” It named no Dominican regulator and said any future implementation would be coordinated with authorities later.

Lava Support

Under the MoU, Lava’s role is to support ecosystem outreach, coordinate applications from crypto-native teams and contribute to the sandbox’s design, the company said. BHL retains control over the project’s direction and assets. Lava’s decentralized RPC and API services would be used only if the teams eventually chosen to build the tokenization framework opt for them. The commercial terms are usage-based, with no fixed fee, equity stake or token grant from BHL, Lava said.

The release said for residents “the deed of ownership will also be a digital asset from day one.” Lava said no tokenization structure has been defined, and that any token would be designed to complement rather than replace existing property registries, likely through special-purpose vehicles representing economic interests.

BHL assembled the land over 20 years through more than 100 parcel purchases and holds it outright, Lava said. Financing is mixed: traditional real estate investors are in the capital stack, with a further portion expected from crypto-native funds raised through the sandbox.

Lava said the sandbox’s team-selection process is expected to begin shortly. Whether the project proceeds to tokenization will depend on the results.

Kalshi now requires users to reveal employers as it fights insider trading and market manipulation

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Kalshi now requires users to reveal employers as it fights insider trading and market manipulation

Kalshi said it will start requiring some users to disclose their employers as part of a broader push to crack down on insider trading and market manipulation on its prediction-market platform.

The federally regulated exchange said Tuesday the new policy will apply to markets it considers at higher risk for insider activity or abuse. Those traders may be screened before being allowed to place trades.

The company said the changes take effect immediately and follow recommendations from an independent Surveillance Audit Committee that reviewed Kalshi’s enforcement systems, monitoring tools, and trading controls.

“For markets with heightened insider or manipulation risk, we now collect employment information before traders can participate,” Kalshi said in a statement. The company said the process is designed to identify people who may have access to material nonpublic information tied to an event or outcome.

The platform’s new measures come as prediction markets face increasing scrutiny. Recently, a Yale and London Business School paper analyzing Polymarket trades from 2023 to 2025 found that only 3% of traders accounted for most price moves. The study highlighted the case of a U.S. Army Green Beret arrested in April for $400,000 bets on Polymarket on the raid in Venezuela to extract then-President Nicolas Maduro, in which he participated. A month later, a Google engineer was also arrested for alleged insider trading on Polymarket.

Prediction markets allow users to bet on the potential outcome of future events, including elections, economic data and corporate and political developments. As the industry grows, critics have raised concerns that traders with insider knowledge could exploit thinly traded or highly sensitive markets.

Kalshi said it blocked more than 100 potential insider trades in the first quarter using new screening tools. The company also said it opened more than 150 investigations, referred more than 20 cases to law enforcement, and issued five disciplinary actions. The company did not provide details about those cases, and the figures could not be independently verified.

The exchange also announced a new risk-scoring system that evaluates markets based on factors including insider-trading risk, market importance, regulatory concerns, and national-security implications. Markets viewed as carrying elevated manipulation risks could face tighter controls or be rejected from listing altogether.

Kalshi said it also added new whistleblower reporting tools that allow users to flag suspicious trading activity directly from individual markets.

Tim Meggs, CEO and co-founder of LO:TECH, a transparent market data infrastructure firm, told CoinDesk that prediction markets have grown so rapidly that questions about their integrity need to be addressed as they are no longer theoretical. “Kalshi’s move to require employment verification, risk-scored markets, and whistleblower tools highlights how the sector is starting to build the surveillance infrastructure to match its ambitions,” Meggs said. “That maturation matters as much as the volume numbers.”

CFTC Proposes Prediction Market Rules Favoring Sports Contracts

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CFTC Proposes Prediction Market Rules Favoring Sports Contracts

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has proposed new rules for prediction markets, signaling that sports event contracts are generally not contrary to the public interest even though federal law classifies them as “gaming.”

Released on Wednesday, the proposal distinguishes sports event contracts from games of pure chance, saying markets based on final scores and win-loss records can aid price discovery. Contracts tied to player injuries, officiating decisions or other outcomes that could encourage manipulation, however, are unlikely to meet the public interest test.

The proposal also clarifies that election contracts are not considered “gaming” under the relevant federal laws. Reuters reported this could further ease regulatory uncertainty for platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket, which rose to prominence during the 2024 US presidential election as traders increasingly turned to prediction markets to gauge the race’s outcome.

The draft rules are open for public comment for 45 days and could help define the future regulatory framework for US prediction markets.

Gary Kalbaugh, a partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP in New York, said the proposal is principles-based rather than a blanket approval, noting that each contract would still be subject to a case-by-case public interest analysis.

“‘Gaming’ is defined more broadly than anticipated and sweeps in sports events,” Kalbaugh wrote on Wednesday. “Contracts settling on aggregate outcomes (final scores, win-loss, season stats) are presumptively permissible.”

Source: Gary Kalbaugh

Related: Anchorage backs Treasury’s GENIUS AML rules, seeks secondary-market sanctions clarity

Increased regulatory clarity comes as prediction markets see adoption surge

The proposed rules come as prediction markets — described as an “asset class” in the draft — continue to gain momentum, with Kalshi and Polymarket reaching multibillion-dollar valuations amid rising investor and institutional interest.

Both companies have expanded their ties to traditional financial markets. Kalshi recently partnered with Nasdaq to launch a new category of prediction markets that allows users to forecast the future valuations of private companies ahead of their initial public offerings.

Polymarket, meanwhile, has partnered with Dow Jones to integrate real-time prediction market data into its media brands, including The Wall Street Journal.

“The prediction markets continue to become more mainstream, with newly formed partnerships with news organizations and more firms moving quickly into this space,” said Melinda Roth, a professor of sports law and corporate finance at Georgetown University Law Center. “As these markets continue to grow, the unanswered question is if event contracts are financial instruments or are they simply gambling.”

Analysts at Bernstein say prediction markets are seeing growing institutional adoption as investors seek alternative macro-hedging tools through binary-outcome contracts.

Magazine: How to fix suspected insider trading on Polymarket and Kalshi

AI-Assisted Attackers Target Hidden DeFi Code

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AI-Assisted Attackers Target Hidden DeFi Code

Unverified smart contracts were linked to at least $36.7 million in losses across four DeFi exploits over the past six months, as attackers increasingly target protocols whose source code is not publicly available, according to Chainalysis.

The largest incident involved Truebit, which lost $26.2 million after an attacker exploited an integer overflow vulnerability in a contract that had remained unverified on Ethereum since 2021. The other incidents involved Trusted Volumes, Aperture Finance and Ekubo, according to the report.

In each case, the exploited contract had not been verified on a blockchain explorer, meaning its source code was not publicly available for review. According to Chainalysis, that limited scrutiny from security researchers and excluded the contracts from many bug bounty programs despite controlling user funds.

Protocols saw exploits on unverified smart contracts. Source: Chainalysis

Chainalysis attributed the trend in part to advances in decompilation tools and artificial intelligence, which can help attackers reverse-engineer smart contract bytecode and identify vulnerabilities even when source code is not publicly available. According to the report, what once required “a skilled reverse engineer spending days on a single contract” can now be partially automated across large numbers of unverified contracts.

The report challenges a longstanding assumption in DeFi that keeping smart contract code private provides an additional layer of security. According to Chainalysis, protocols relying on hidden code are increasingly depending on “obscurity as a security measure,” an approach the company said is rapidly losing effectiveness. 

Chainalysis recommended source code verification, broader bug bounty coverage and real-time monitoring tools as safeguards against future exploits.

Related: Humanity Protocol token falls 85% amid $30M private key exploit

DeFi security concerns persist after record April losses

The report comes amid a broader rise in crypto exploits. According to DeFiLlama, hackers stole $629.7 million in April alone, the highest monthly total since February 2025.

Two incidents accounted for most of the losses. KelpDAO lost $293 million and Drift Protocol suffered a $280 million exploit, together representing more than 80% of the month’s stolen funds.

Although losses fell sharply in May, with CertiK reporting $68.3 million stolen from cryptocurrency exploits, the fallout from April’s largest attacks continued. In June, blockchain intelligence platform Arkham reported that the attacker behind the KelpDAO exploit had laundered nearly all of the roughly $220 million in unfrozen stolen funds.

Kelp DAO Hacker-tagged wallet, total balance. Source: Arkham

The KelpDAO exploit also prompted several DeFi protocols to review their security infrastructure, with projects including Solv Protocol announcing plans to migrate to Chainlink’s crosschain infrastructure following internal security reviews.

This month, Anthropic said 560 of the 832 accounts it banned for policy violations over a one-year period had used AI to help prepare cyberattacks, including writing malware and identifying vulnerabilities.

Magazine: The legal battle over who can claim DeFi’s stolen millions

Bitcoin Miner Profits Fell As BTC Price Lost Strength: Will Miners Sell?

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Bitcoin Miner Profits Fell As BTC Price Lost Strength: Will Miners Sell?

Key takeaways:

  • Record-low Bitcoin mining margins and rising demand for AI infrastructure incentivize miners to reduce their BTC positions.
  • Institutional spot Bitcoin flows vastly surpass miner output, making macro trends more vital than miner profits alone.

Bitcoin’s price slide to $62,000 was paired with weak on-chain activity and declining BTC miner revenues, which have fallen to an all-time low. This revenue drop is fueling investor anxiety over potential sell pressure, especially since miners and mining pools still control over $110 billion in Bitcoin.

1 TH/second of hashing power per day returns, USD. Source: Luxor Hashrate Index

The estimated daily return for 1 terahash per second of hashing power plunged to an all-time low of $0.28 on Tuesday, down from $0.39 just a month ago. For context, the estimated monthly gross profit for an Antminer S21 XP Hydro (at an electricity cost of $0.07 per kilowatt-hour) has slid to $137, down from $192 last month. 

This profitability crunch arrives as demand for AI capacity and infrastructure investments surged, dampening market sentiment just as the crucial $60,000 support level was put to the test.

Bitcoin miners’ 30-day net position change, BTC. Source: Glassnode Studio

The 14-day average net position change for Bitcoin held in miner and mining pool addresses flipped negative in early May and has remained negative since. Whether these liquidations are intended to fund ongoing operations, reduce debt leverage, or bankroll expansion into AI data center computing, the net effect remains a heavy drag on Bitcoin’s price discovery.

Source: X/LightningNewsX

The high concentration of Bitcoin hashrate among the three largest mining pools is a frequent target of analyst criticism. The latest 7-day data show that Foundry USA, AntPool, and F2Pool control a combined 59% market share. In contrast, the top three Bitcoin mining pools held a combined 44% hashrate market share back in 2022. 

According to Bernstein analysts, the primary bottleneck for scaling AI data centers is access to electricity rather than chips. This constraint is prompting some Bitcoin miners to repurpose parts of their power infrastructure to support AI computing applications, a sector currently viewed as more stable and lucrative than traditional crypto mining.

Source: X/Capriole Investments

According to Charles Edwards, founder of Capriole Investments, the Bitcoin mining production cost, including depreciation and amortization, stands at $62,650, while the absolute minimum to break even on electricity is $50,120. However, certain publicly listed companies leverage much more efficient ASIC models and industrial-scale energy contracts.

American Bitcoin Corp (ABTC US) reported gross operational costs near $36,200 per Bitcoin mined in the first quarter of 2026. Ultimately, pinning down a single, industry-wide production cost is impossible, and some operations choose to mine at a loss for specific tax benefits. Even if these high-cost miners temporarily shut down, spot institutional flows now vastly surpass miners’ output.

Related: Bitcoin may act as a ‘canary in the coal mine’ as risk-off pressure spreads–Bitwise

Bitcoin traded below its estimated production cost for more than six months in 2019 and again in 2023, based on Capriole Investments data. Whether the current market stagnation persists depends on investor risk perception amid broader macroeconomic uncertainty, rather than miner profitability alone.

Mastercard prepares agentic commerce platform for a future where AI agents make payments

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Mastercard prepares agentic commerce platform for a future where AI agents make payments

Mastercard (MA) is betting that AI agents will soon become active participants in the economy and wants its payments network to sit at the center of that shift.

The payments giant on Tuesday unveiled Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M), a service enabling AI agents and software systems to make payments to each other securely and at scale. The platform supports automated transactions across cards, bank accounts and stablecoins, while providing identity verification, spending controls and guaranteed settlement through Mastercard’s network.

The service comes as companies across technology, payments and crypto race to build infrastructure for what many are calling agentic commerce, where AI systems complete tasks, purchase services and coordinate transactions on behalf of users. Agents could be involved in trillions of dollars worth of transactions by the end of the decade, according to some estimates.

“We are already seeing a number of services and agents popping up to provide a range of products and services,” Raj Dhamodharan, Mastercard’s executive vice president of blockchain and digital asset products and partnerships, told CoinDesk. Those services range from booking travel and building websites to creating artwork and completing other digital tasks.

Dhamodharan said the next challenge is creating trust between those systems.

Businesses and consumers need confidence that agents are interacting with legitimate counterparties and operating within authorized spending limits. Service providers, meanwhile, need assurance that they will be paid.

“These are problems that we’ve solved before in the B2B world and the carded world for decades,” Dhamodharan said. “We’re bringing the same level of trust and ability to find the right set of agents, ability to convey that you’re actually going to complete the payment and to make sure that people can get paid.”

The platform is designed to address those concerns through credentialing, permissioning and settlement services. The company said the system can authenticate agents, enforce spending rules and settle payments across multiple payment methods, including stablecoins.

More than 30 companies have joined the initiative, including Coinbase (COIN), Stripe, Adyen, Checkout.com, Cloudflare, RippleX, Polygon Labs, Solana Foundation and OKX. Mastercard said permissions and credentials associated with AI agents will initially be recorded on the Polygon, Solana and Base blockchains.

Although large-scale machine-to-machine commerce remains nascent, Dhamodharan said Mastercard is already seeing signs of demand. He pointed to increasing activity around HTTP 402, an emerging internet payment standard, where automated transactions often fail because no payment method is available.

“There are already transactions happening,” he said. “There are already many declines happening because there is no payment option available. That is a leading indicator in our view.”

Mastercard said it plans to expand access to Agent Pay for Machines later this year.

Second Launches Bark On Bitcoin Mainnet, Targeting Self-Custody UX Gap

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Second Launches Bark On Bitcoin Mainnet, Targeting Self-Custody UX Gap

Second, a Bitcoin development lab, has officially launched Bark — its implementation of the Ark protocol — on the Bitcoin mainnet, opening up self-custodial bitcoin payments to developers and everyday users alike without the complexity traditionally associated with Lightning Network or on-chain transactions.

Bark is built on the Ark protocol, a layer-2 solution that allows large numbers of users to share on-chain UTXOs via trees of pre-signed, off-chain transactions, spreading fee costs across participants while preserving individual self-custody. 

Unlike Lightning, Ark requires no channel management or liquidity pre-allocation, addressing pain points that have long kept mainstream users tethered to custodial alternatives.

“We wanted to make it ridiculously easy for users to get started with self-custodial bitcoin, hold it, and spend it, without surprise fees, and without having to manage channels or liquidity,” wrote CEO Steven Roose in a blog post.

As of today, Second’s Ark server is publicly accessible for payments. The launch includes a full developer toolkit — the Bark SDK — written in Rust with language bindings for Kotlin, Swift, React Native, Flutter, Go, Python, and WebAssembly. For server environments, Second also ships Barkd, a standalone wallet daemon exposing a REST interface with an OpenAPI spec.

Several applications are already mainnet-enabled at launch. 

Noah is a full-stack mobile Ark wallet pairing a React Native frontend with a Rust backend. Arke is a design-led native iOS wallet built around open-source UX principles from bitcoin.design. Satsigner brings Sparrow-style UTXO management and multisig workflows to mobile users.  Bark Wallet is an Umbrel app supporting Ark, Lightning, and on-chain payments.

A BTCPay Server plugin — also built by Second — lets merchants process self-custodial Lightning payments without opening channels or managing liquidity.

Second has raised $5.1 million from a private investor and operates with a team of 11. The company has drawn notable industry talent, including former Blockstream engineers.

The launch comes at a moment of heightened competition in the Bitcoin layer-2 space, with multiple protocols — including Ark Labs’ Arkade and statechain-based solutions — vying to close the gap between self-custody and user experience.

Second will also host a live AMA on Stacker News on June 9 at 10:00 AM EST.

Netomi CEO says $5 trillion AI customer experience market could boost stablecoin demand

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Netomi CEO says $5 trillion AI customer experience market could boost stablecoin demand

The customer experience industry will become a $5 trillion market by 2030, according to Netomi founder and CEO Puneet Mehta, who says that growth will create demand for stablecoins and blockchain-based payment infrastructure rather than pull capital away from crypto.

Mehta said companies currently spend roughly $500 billion annually on customer experience-related knowledge work. As AI expands beyond customer support into sales, conversion, upselling and cross-selling, he expects the market opportunity to grow tenfold by 2030.

“Customer experience today is structured as a silo,” Mehta said. “That layer of technology and people does not fully talk to every system and every process autonomously in the company. Once that starts to happen, it unlocks a much bigger category.”

Mehta, whose company recently raised $110 million in a Series C round backed by Accenture Ventures and Adobe Ventures, argues that the rise of artificial intelligence and crypto should be viewed as complementary trends rather than competing sectors.

“The idea that AI is simply sucking capital away from crypto is a fundamental misunderstanding of where technology is heading,” said Mehta, who previously worked as an engineer and data scientist at IBM and later held similar roles at JPMorgan, Citi and Merrill Lynch. “We are not in a zero-sum battle for venture dollars.”

Mehta’s view that AI agents will require faster financial infrastructure aligns with a growing argument among crypto executives that autonomous software could become a major driver of stablecoin adoption.

Fiat-pegged cryptocurrencies are entering a new phase of adoption, with large corporations using them for cross-border treasury flows while AI agents begin using blockchain rails for autonomous payments, Bridge and Deus X Capital executives recently said at Consensus 2026. In April, Chainalysis said stablecoins are on track to become a foundational layer of global finance, with adjusted transaction volumes projected to reach $719 trillion by 2035

AI enabling crypto

The next phase of enterprise software will rely on autonomous AI agents capable of handling increasingly complex business functions, including financial transactions, according to Mehta.

“AI agents are moving money and assets faster than legacy enterprises can follow,” he said. “An autonomous agent cannot rely on traditional banking systems that take days to settle transactions via manual paperwork. ”

Mehta argues that fully automated software systems require two key components: AI systems capable of decision-making and blockchain payment infrastructure capable of moving money instantly.

“To achieve true end-to-end automation, these software systems require always-on capital rails that operate 24/7,” he said.

That requirement could drive greater demand for stablecoins and blockchain-based settlement networks that operate around the clock (24/7). Stablecoin issuers and crypto payment firms have increasingly positioned their products as tools for real-time settlement and cross-border transactions.

Still, many enterprise software companies continue to rely on traditional payment providers and banking networks, and it remains unclear how quickly blockchain-based settlement systems will become a standard component of AI-driven commerce.

Unicorn status

Netomi’s latest raise brings its total funding to $168 million. Mehta declined to disclose the company’s valuation but said the company is nearing unicorn status.

Netomi, whose clients include global giants such as Delta, United Airlines, MetLife, ESPN, and ATB Financial, is building a unified AI platform rather than a collection of disconnected tools, he said.

While many enterprise AI providers focus on individual functions such as customer service, legal operations or sales support, he explained, Netomi is building systems that work across those functions and share information between them.

“Most companies are building point solutions,” Mehta said. “They’re solving one problem at a time. We believe the future is a connected enterprise where AI systems aren’t operating in silos but working together across the entire organization.”

UPDATE (June 10, 17:10 UTC): Adds section on Netomi nearing unicorn status.

Strategy (MSTR) CEO Says Bitcoin Sale Was About Market ‘Inoculation,’ Not A Retreat

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Strategy (MSTR) CEO Says Bitcoin Sale Was About Market ‘Inoculation,’ Not A Retreat

Strategy Inc. CEO Phong Le somewhat pushed back Tuesday against the wave of criticism that followed the company’s first Bitcoin sale since 2022, telling CNBC’s Power Lunch that the move was a deliberate, limited exercise designed to signal operational flexibility — not a philosophical reversal.

“We wanted to inoculate the market and we wanted to test our processes,” Le said in what the network described as a first-time interview. “We learned that everything works.”

Between May 26 and May 31, Strategy sold 32 Bitcoin for approximately $2.5 million at an average price of $77,135 per coin — a transaction that, despite representing just 0.004% of the company’s total holdings, set off an outsized market reaction and reignited debate over whether Michael Saylor’s famous “never sell” doctrine was being abandoned.

Le was careful to frame the disposal in terms of balance sheet management rather than conviction. He cited three reasons for the sale: establishing that Strategy can sell when necessary, confirming that internal systems for executing Bitcoin disposals are fully operational, and creating opportunities to capture tax losses on Bitcoin acquired at lower cost basis — the company has purchased BTC at prices ranging from $10,000 to $125,000 per coin.

Critically, he said the sale was not driven by financial distress. “We did not need to sell our Bitcoin to satisfy our dividends,” Le said. “We’re able to do that through other capital-raising activities.” Proceeds from the sale were directed toward distributions on the company’s STRC perpetual preferred stock.

Le also pointed out that Strategy remained a net buyer: on balance, the company purchased approximately 1,500 Bitcoin over the same period it sold the 32 coins.

The most pointed exchange came when the host pressed Le on the backlash from investors who believed Strategy had pledged never to liquidate its Bitcoin reserves. Le acknowledged the frustration but was unapologetic.

“We have a set of constituents that we have to be able to answer to,” he said, listing common stockholders, preferred shareholders, debt holders, and Bitcoin holders. “When it makes sense for our common stockholders for us to sell our Bitcoin, we will.”

Le suggested the loudest critics were retail investors and “crypto anarchists” ideologically committed to permanent hodling — not the institutional shareholders the company interacts with directly.

“Our institutional shareholders that we talked to don’t seem to be unnerved by it,” he said.

This was not Strategy’s first Bitcoin disposal. In December 2022, the company sold 704 BTC at $16,776 per coin and repurchased 810 BTC two days later — a tax-loss harvesting maneuver that exploited the lack of a crypto wash-sale rule.

Jeffrey’s chief market strategist David Zervos, who joined Le on set, asked about the macro picture around Bitcoin, noting weakness across traditional safe-haven assets. Le acknowledged the broader headwinds, citing three macro forces pressuring Bitcoin: uncertainty around the Federal Reserve’s interest rate path, two ongoing global wars, and a lack of regulatory clarity from Congress on pending crypto legislation.

Still, Le remained bullish on Bitcoin’s long-term thesis. 

“I do think Bitcoin is a hedge against inflation. I think Bitcoin is a hedge against big government,” he said, adding that the current environment — potentially a cyclical drawdown — mirrors the roughly 75% pullback seen in May 2022, four years ago.

Bitcoin price and Strategy shares under pressure

The market, for now, is less sanguine. Bitcoin was trading around $61,600 on June 10, 2026 — down more than 40% from its all-time high of $126,198 reached in October 2025. The sell-off deepened after the Strategy announcement coincided with record spot ETF outflows estimated between $2.8 billion and $3.5 billion, triggering $1.8 billion in forced liquidations in a single day.

MSTR shares have been caught in the same downdraft, trading near $117–$127 as of this week — down roughly 67% from their 52-week high of $457.

Strategy has since resumed buying, acquiring 1,550 BTC at an average price of $65,332 between June 1 and June 7 in a move analysts characterized as an effort to restore market confidence. 

As of late May, the company held 845,256 Bitcoin at a total cost basis of approximately $63.97 billion.

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