When Strategy (MSTR), the largest publicly traded company holding bitcoin, first floated the idea of selling its bitcoin stash to fund its dividend obligations during its recent earnings call, it raised concerns among investors and the crypto community.

However, executive chairman Michael Saylor sat down with CoinDesk senior analyst James Van Straten at Consensus in Miami to explain, in his view, why the announcement was “inconsequential.”

As the firm expands from a bitcoin treasury company into a full-spectrum capital markets operation, in a wide-ranging conversation with CoinDesk, Saylor discussed the company’s potential sale of bitcoin to fund dividends, the mechanics of its preferred stock (called Stretch or STRC), and what critics get wrong about its trading strategy.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. This is the first part of a series of stories from CoinDesk’s interview with Michael Saylor

CoinDesk: Your earnings call revealed that Strategy could sell bitcoin to fund its dividends. That spooked some investors. How significant is it actually?

Michael Saylor: It’s a big nothing burger from an economic point of view. If we were to fund all of our dividends exclusively by selling bitcoin over the next year, we would buy 20 bitcoin for every one we sold. So it’s no different than buying 20 bitcoin and selling no bitcoin. And then from a market point of view, bitcoin has somewhere between $20 and $50 billion of liquidity today. If we were to fund all of our dividends with bitcoin, you would be talking about maybe $3 million; it’s immeasurable. It’s really inconsequential.

CoinDesk: So, how do you actually decide between buying bitcoin, retiring debt, or buying back your own stock?

Saylor: We use two metrics. The first is BTC yield. What’s the benefit to the common equity shareholder? If there’s no yield, it’s equity neutral. If there’s a negative yield, it’s dilutive. If there’s a positive yield, it’s accretive. The second metric is credit: what is the impact on the balance sheet? Does it create more risk?

For example, if we used all of our dollars to buy back stock, it would be equity-positive, it would create yield, but it would be credit-negative. The market price of bitcoin, of all our credit instruments, of all our bonds, is changing every day. Day to day, we adjust our capital markets activity to take advantage of yield opportunities and to meet our liabilities.

We prioritize trades that create more bitcoin per share. If we can create 10x more bitcoin per share doing one trade versus another, we’d prioritize that first.

CoinDesk: Bitcoin is currently around 36%-37% off its all-time high. Is this a good time to sell high-cost-basis Bitcoin and capture that tax credit?

Saylor: We have the option to capture up to $2.2 billion in tax credit. The value of that credit is changing every day, every minute. We also have the option to calculate the mispricing of the convertible bonds: there’s a massive yield in that. We also have the option to capture bitcoin in a trade. We make that decision week by week, day by day.

Everything we do precludes us from doing something else. So we always have to consider if this is equity-positive, but credit-negative? Maybe it’s screaming good for the equity, makes us $500 million, but it’s a little bit bad for the credit. If the credit is super strong, I would do something equity-positive and slightly credit-negative. If the credit is super weak, we wouldn’t.

We’re not going to telegraph exactly when or whether we do it. But the optionality is there, and it’s one of the more interesting trades on the table right now.

CoinDesk: Critics on X (formerly Twitter) say you always buy the weekly high on bitcoin. What’s actually happening?

Saylor: That’s an ignorant criticism. What’s going on is that when we’re buying bitcoin with an equity swap, it’s because the equity rallied and there’s a massive equity premium. When bitcoin surges, the equity surges, the premium expands, and it actually becomes more profitable for us to swap. We’re swapping a share of MSTR for a share of BTC when the premium expands, and that’s when bitcoin rallies.

In a week of 168 hours, there might be three hours during which the market has rallied, and we might raise $250 million of swaps in those three hours. So yes, we’re picking the top of the bitcoin market, but we’re also picking the top of the equity capital market and swapping the two of them — and we’re generating a much larger gain. We’re making money for our shareholders risk-free by doing these swaps.

If we wanted to do those swaps when the price is low, the premium is low. It makes much less money, or we would lose money for the common [shares] by swapping the equity when the bitcoin price is low. That’s why it appears that we might be buying the top, but we’re not buying it with money that’s been sitting around.

CoinDesk: STRC has been your breakout product. Can you explain how it differs from a typical bond?

Saylor: We constructed this instrument so it would be extraordinarily robust. The key is that we created a perpetual preferred that never comes due. When someone decides they want to sell $2 billion of STRC, we’re not redeeming it. There is no liquidation right. There is no put right. It’s not a bank deposit.

If I sell you $2 billion of a stablecoin on Friday, you can redeem it on Monday, and I have to come up with $2 billion of cash. But when we sell you $2 billion of Stretch, it’s a perpetual swap. We’re agreeing to pay you SOFR [Secured Overnight Financing Rate] plus a credit spread forever. You’re agreeing to give us the money forever. We’re planning to hold bitcoin forever.

The liquidity isn’t being provided by us. It’s being provided by the market. There are people at Soros and Millennium and Citadel that actually want to make fast trades in minutes or hours. If I pegged the entire thing at 100 and absorbed all the liquidity myself, they wouldn’t have the opportunity. And I would take on $100 billion of risk, which would be a problem for the equity, and I would deprive them of being able to make a very healthy annualized return nearly risk-free.

CoinDesk: Stretch has been trading at a slight discount to par recently and is taking longer to recover after dividend dates. What’s going on?

Saylor: You have to look at it on a full monthly cycles. We sold $3.2 billion in a couple of weeks on an instrument with a basis of around $5 billion. So we expanded the supply by a huge factor. It doesn’t surprise me that it takes a while for the market to digest that. Some of that was certainly people buying a billion to clip a 90-cent dividend and then selling back.

We’re at almost a 400% growth rate. Given the hypergrowth, it doesn’t surprise me that it’s [STRC] digesting it [the sell pressure]. Over the past few days, it’s [STRC] been trading within a five-cent [of $100 per share] daily range, three cents yesterday. All of that’s comfortable. We think of it the same way we designed an airplane wing: you want the wings to flex. If you try to make the flex go away, they snap. The instrument is designed to bend under stress, but not break.

Disclosure: The author of this story owns shares in Strategy (MSTR).

Read More: Michael Saylor’s latest tax strategy echoes Strategy’s 2022 bitcoin sale

Google and PayPal told Consensus Miami AI agents will run on crypto rails as bank accounts remain inaccessible.

Senior figures from Google Cloud and PayPal told Consensus Miami on May 10 that the next wave of internet commerce will run on crypto rails because AI agents cannot use traditional financial accounts. Richard Widmann, global head of Web3 strategy at Google Cloud, said the current internet experience does not extend to autonomous agents.

“An agent cannot get a bank account. It’s not hard, it just is impossible,” Widmann said, citing technological and regulatory barriers. Crypto, by contrast, is “a fantastic machine-readable interface for payments,” he added.

What Google and PayPal are building

To address the gap, Google has launched the Agentic Payments Protocol, or AP2, an open protocol donated to the FIDO Foundation with more than 120 partners including PayPal. Widmann compared the move to the x402 internet-native payment standard given to the Linux Foundation.

May Zabaneh, senior vice president and general manager of crypto at PayPal, said the company treats agents as the next commerce channel after its evolution from offline to online to mobile payments. PYUSD, PayPal’s stablecoin, is “a very natural programmable layer for payments,” she said.

A recent PayPal survey found that 95% of merchants now see AI agent traffic on their sites, but only 20% have machine-readable catalogs. “Merchants need to be ready for this next era,” Zabaneh said.

The broader shift in AI commerce

McKinsey estimates AI agents could mediate up to $5 trillion in global consumer commerce by 2030. The question facing the industry is no longer whether agents will handle payments, but which rails they will run on and who controls the standards.

Consensus Miami 2026 was the first major crypto conference to dedicate an entire programming track to agentic commerce. On liability, Zabaneh said the question of who is responsible when an AI agent makes a disputed purchase remains unresolved, calling it one of the key open questions the sector must answer.

MoonPay has also moved into this space with non-custodial wallets built specifically for AI agents, adding competitive pressure on the emerging agentic payments infrastructure.

A logic bug in Huma’s legacy V1 Polygon credit pools let an attacker drain about $101,400 in USDC, but its Solana‑based PayFi V2 and PST token remain structurally unaffected.

That bug let the attacker bypass access controls and withdraw funds from treasury‑linked pools as if they were an approved borrower. Blockaid’s analysis shows about 82,315.57 USDC drained from one contract (0x3EBc1), 17,290.76 USDC.e from another (0x95533), and 1,783.97 USDC.e from a third (0xe8926), all in a tightly orchestrated sequence that executed in a single transaction. The exploit did not involve breaking cryptography or private keys, but rather manipulating business logic so the system “thought” the attacker was allowed to pull funds.

Huma says it had already been phasing out its V1 liquidity pools on Polygon when the exploit occurred, and has now fully paused all remaining V1 contracts to prevent any further risk. In its disclosure, the team emphasized that Huma 2.0 — a permissionless, composable “real‑yield” PayFi platform that launched on Solana in April 2025 with support from Circle and the Solana Foundation — is “a complete rebuild” with a different architecture and is not connected to the vulnerable V1 code.

Huma 2.0’s design centers on the $PST (PayFi Strategy Token), a liquid, yield‑bearing LP token that represents positions in payment‑financing strategies and can be integrated with Solana DeFi protocols such as Jupiter, Kamino and RateX. By contrast, the exploited V1 contracts were part of an older, permissioned credit‑pool system on Polygon, now effectively retired.

For users, the key takeaway is that the roughly $101,400 USDC loss hit legacy protocol‑level liquidity rather than individual wallets, and that current deposits and PST positions on Solana are reported as safe. Still, the incident adds another example to a long list of DeFi exploits where the weak point was not signature schemes but business logic in aging contracts — reinforcing why teams like Huma are migrating to redesigned architectures, and why users should treat “legacy” and “soon to be deprecated” pools with the same caution they reserve for unaudited code.

Circle’s (CRCL) upcoming Arc blockchain and its $222 million token presale are raising a broader question for crypto investors: should Circle still be valued mainly as a stablecoin issuer, or as an infrastructure company building the rails for digital finance?

Alongside its quarterly earnings this week, the company announced a major fundraising round for Arc ahead of a planned summer launch, valuing the network at roughly $3 billion backed by investors including a16z crypto, Apollo, BlackRock and ARK Invest.

While earnings results were mixed, the news resonated well with investors, as Circle shares surged more than 15% on Monday, suggesting the launch addresses a critical compliance gap for Wall Street.

“We have built what we believe will be one of the most institutionally-ready networks in the world,” Allaire explained during the earnings call, describing Arc as a system designed to be operated by financial institutions with the “trust required for global economic infrastructure.”

While this move was cheered by the market and some analysts, including Clear Street’s Owen Lau, who called Arc a “second growth engine” for the USDC issuer, there are still questions about the valuation of Circle’s shares versus Arc’s token, as well as rising competition.

The move also comes as Congress advances stablecoin legislation that could eventually allow banks, fintechs and payment firms to issue their own digital dollars. That prospect has led some investors to question whether stablecoins themselves may become commoditized over time.

What is Arc?

The Arc chain, in test mode since October with plans to go live this summer, is Circle’s attempt to expand its stablecoin business into a broader infrastructure layer.

During the company’s Monday earnings call, CEO Jeremy Allaire pitched Arc as an “economic operating system” designed for payments firms, asset issuers and capital markets.

“We built the highways for USDC,” Allaire said on the earnings call. “Now we’re opening them to other stablecoin and real-world asset issuers.”

The idea, he said, is to make stablecoins and tokenized assets easier to move, while keeping the level of control, compliance and reliability that large financial players expect. The chain is also being built to be ready for AI agents gaining ground in finance, he added.

Allaire’s comments are signs of where the stablecoin industry is heading. The industry’s market cap is at an all-time high, rising above $320 billion. Almost every crypto or traditional firm is either building a stablecoin or rails to service the industry, touting a more efficient, less expensive alternative to legacy systems. A16z, lead investor in Arc’s fundraising, perhaps put it aptly when it said that stablecoins are becoming “one of the most important tools for global finance.”

However, the VC firm noted that the underlying blockchain infrastructure remains fragmented and is largely optimized for crypto-native users rather than banks and corporations. According to a16z, this is where Arc comes in, by aiming to bridge that gap, offering fast settlement, configurable privacy and known validators, features that align more closely with institutional requirements, the firm said.

“As the world’s finance moves onchain, we believe that a handful of blockchain networks will together emerge as the new backbone of the financial system,” a16z partners Ali Yahya and Noah Levine wrote. “Arc is in a strong position to become one of them,” they added.

Circle shares vs Arc token

However, given Arc’s token presale, questions remain about how Arc affects Circle’s valuation in the long term: Why should one buy the shares if they can now buy the token?

To Clear Street’s Lau, they are “two very different concepts.”

He described Arc as the infrastructure layer while USDC operates as an application running on top of it. “You have one more tunnel for your apps to run on. It just means that you have more channel, more opportunity to expand your USDC down the road,” Lau told CoinDesk in an interview.

Lau compared Arc to Ethereum or Solana — layer-1 blockchains that support applications, payments and tokenized assets. In a note earlier on Monday, he argued the network could reinforce USDC adoption, particularly as Circle pushes into AI-driven payments, tokenized finance and commercial settlement systems.

Still, Lau acknowledged Arc remains highly speculative, at least for now.

“It depends on the network activity,” he said. “We still don’t know what apps will actually run on Arc.” For now, he views Arc as “option value” rather than a tangible contributor to Circle’s business.

That caution is shared by Compass Point analyst Ed Engel, who warned investors against assigning too much value to the project before meaningful usage emerges.

“We would prefer to wait for Arc to generate meaningful transaction activity before ascribing value to ARC tokens,” Engel wrote in a research note on Monday. He added that crypto venture firms have a long history of backing blockchain projects at elevated valuations, only for token prices to later decline after launch.

The economics behind Arc remains another open question.

Circle has said fees on the network can be denominated in stablecoins while still accruing value to the ARC token through validator rewards and token burns. Analysts say the structure resembles Ethereum’s model, in which network activity drives demand for the underlying token.

Lau said the $3 billion valuation attached to the presale appears credible given the caliber of the institutional investors involved. “I don’t think that’s crazy,” he said. For now, Arc may matter less for what it generates today than what it signals about Circle’s future ambitions.

‘Significant competition’

The disagreement on what to buy: Token or the share, highlights a central debate now emerging around Circle and the stablecoin industry: whether owning blockchain infrastructure becomes more important as digital dollar issuance itself becomes more competitive.

On one hand, with the launch of Arc, incumbent networks would face increased competition, according to digital asset investment bank FRNT. “Incumbent networks will face significant competition as solutions such as Arc increase in maturity,” the firm wrote in a note.

On the other hand, the industry is dominated by mostly Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC, and other stablecoins such as PayPal aren’t gaining market share, according to Clear Street’s Lau. But now, Circle adding Arc creates new competitive tensions, he added.

By launching its own blockchain, Circle is no longer just a customer of crypto infrastructure providers like Ethereum and Solana. Lau said Arc now competes directly with those networks and potentially with Coinbase’s Base blockchain as well.

While there are questions about valuation and the longer-term competitive impact, launching Arc fits a pattern in which crypto developments have increasingly shifted focus to large financial institutions and Wall Street, rather than retail users.

Tempo, incubated by payments giant Stripe and investment firm Paradigm, raised $500 million at a $5 billion valuation in October to launch a payments-focused blockchain. Digital Asset, developer of the Canton Network, has attracted backing from Goldman Sachs, DRW, Citadel Securities, BNY and Nasdaq, and is reportedly raising another $300 million at a $2 billion valuation.

Arc’s fundraising is another example that big-money investors bet that large financial firms increasingly want blockchain infrastructure designed around how institutions actually move money — cross-border payments, treasury management, FX and tokenized assets — rather than the open, retail-first systems crypto started with. And Circle is betting on the trend by going all-in on Arc.

Bitcoin (BTC) appears positioned for a potentially extended uptrend as a key valuation metric moves toward a bullish cross with a long-term moving average. CryptoQuant analysts highlighted that the Market Value to Realized Value (MVRV) ratio is on track to print a golden cross against the 200-day moving average, a signal historically associated with powerful rallies. While markets remain cautious, the signal adds to a growing cadence of optimism among a subset of traders and analysts.

Among market participants, there is still debate about the near-term path. Some traders contend that the bear market found its bottom around $60,000, and a substantial breakout could follow as the market digests the latest bullish indicators. The mix of on-chain metrics and price action has kept the discussion lively, with several analysts weighing in on what a new cycle might entail.

Key takeaways

• Bitcoin’s MVRV ratio is approaching a golden cross with the 200-day EMA, a pattern historically followed by major upswings.
• There is a contingent view that $60,000 marked the bear-market bottom, with expectations of a substantial breakout ahead.
• The looming MVRV-200D EMA cross is framed by some analysts as a sign of a trend reversal rather than a mere consolidation phase.
• Short-term cost-basis bands for the most recent holders imply room for further upside, with key levels around $92,000 and $104,000 identified as “heated” and “overheated” zones.

MVRV momentum: a potential trend reversal in the making

Bitcoin’s MVRV ratio — a gauge that compares market value to the realized value of coins — is on the cusp of a bullish crossover with the 200-day moving average, according to CryptoQuant analyst CW8900. In a recent post, CW8900 described the anticipated cross as a “golden cross” and said, “This signal is a representative trend reversal signal and is a bullish indicator.”

The last times such a cross appeared served as notable inflection points. The immediate past example occurred after the 2022 cycle bottom, when BTC subsequently rallied about 90% to roughly $31,000 from about $16,300 in Q1 2023. A later cross in September 2023 was followed by a multi-fold rally, culminating in a peak near the all-time high observed in October 2025.

Earlier in the cycle, CW8900 had flagged a golden cross when the 30-day simple moving average of the MVRV ratio crossed above the 90-day SMA in late April, suggesting a broader bullish tilt for BTC. Such assessments align with a growing array of on-chain signals that traders watch for potential regime shifts.

Near-term price action and the cost-basis narrative

Bitcoin’s latest rally took it into the high-$70,000s and toward $83,000, reinforcing the view that bulls are testing key resistance levels. The market is now confronting the 200-day moving average around $82,500, a level that has historically served as a pivot between range-bound action and a breakout. A sustained move above this line could mark an end to the prevailing multi-month downtrend; conversely, failure to clear it might invite renewed downside pressure toward pivotal supports, including around $50,000.

Analyst Shib Spain argued that BTC’s break above a multi-month downtrend line on the weekly chart signaled a structural shift away from bearish dominance, reinforced by a MACD bullish crossover. “Bitcoin’s huge breakout is coming. MACD bullish reversal forming,” the analyst wrote, claiming the bull run is just getting started.

Market observers have also highlighted the growing support from on-chain metrics tied to long-term and short-term holders. In particular, the short-term holder (STH) cost basis — the average price paid by wallets that held BTC for fewer than 155 days — has moved with the price, indicating that newer buyers have reentered at levels that could support further upside. When viewed through the lens of cost-basis bands, the chart suggests BTC could move into the “heated” zone near $92,000, with a further push toward the “overheated” band around $104,000 if momentum strengthens.

Is a supercycle on the horizon, or is this a more modest expansion?

Beyond the immediate technicals, several observers have framed the current setup within a potential larger structural move. Cointelegraph coverage and market commentary have pointed to the possibility of a “supercycle” rally, with forecasts ranging into the $180,000–$250,000 area within a relatively short horizon, backed by institutional accumulation and an improving technical footing. While these projections reflect a segment of the market’s most optimistic voices, they come with caveats about macro conditions, regulatory developments, and the durability of on-chain demand.

As with any cycle-high narrative, readers should consider the balance of factors: retail and institutional participation, macro liquidity, and how on-chain metrics align with price action across multiple timeframes. The coming weeks could test whether the current signals translate into a sustained uptrend or if resistance at key levels reasserts itself.

Related coverage notes a broader context in which notable investors and firms continue to express interest in BTC exposure, including high-profile moves and statements that have kept conversations about the asset’s strategic role in diversified portfolios alive. For a broader perspective on recent developments, see the referenced materials linked in this report.

What lies ahead for BTC will hinge on a confluence of technical signals and macro catalysts. A decisive move above the $82,500–$83,000 zone would bolster the bulls’ case, while a rejection could set the stage for a renewed test of lower supports. Investors and traders should monitor the evolving MVRV signal, the MACD dynamics, and the on-chain cost-basis bands as the market weighs its next big move.

Further reading and related discussion can be found in coverage that examined Saylor’s activity and other BTC buy-sell signals in Q1 earnings context as the narrative around price discovery continues to evolve.

Readers should stay tuned for how BTC behaves around the 200-day moving average and whether the anticipated MVRV cross materializes into sustained demand, especially given the divergent opinions about the path of a potential “supercycle.”

TLDR

• Bitmine reduced its weekly ether purchases after months of rapid accumulation in 2026.
• The company bought 26,659 ETH last week, worth about $63 million at current prices.
• Bitmine now holds more than 5.2 million ETH, which equals about 4.31% of Ethereum’s circulating supply.
• Tom Lee said the firm slowed buying as it approached its long-term goal of owning 5% of supply.
• Bitmine has acquired over 1 million ETH since the start of this year.
• The company’s total crypto and cash holdings stand at $13.4 billion.

Bitmine Immersion Technologies has reduced its weekly ether purchases after months of rapid accumulation. Chairman Tom Lee confirmed the shift after the firm approached its 5% Ethereum supply target. The company still holds over 5.2 million ETH after buying more than 1 million tokens this year.

Bitmine Eases Weekly Ether Accumulation Pace

Bitmine bought 26,659 ETH last week, valued at about $63 million at current prices. However, that figure equals roughly one quarter of its recent weekly average. The purchase increased total holdings to over 5.2 million ETH, or about 4.31% of the circulating supply.

Tom Lee addressed the change during remarks at Consensus 2026 in Miami. He said the company would reduce weekly purchases from over 100,000 ETH. “Our previous pace of buys would have us reach 5% by mid-July,” Lee said in a statement.

The company adjusted its pace as it neared its long-term acquisition target. Lee said Bitmine considered easing purchases once it approached the 5% threshold. The firm has already acquired more than 1 million ETH since January 2026.

Bitmine continues to buy ether despite the broader market downturn. Lee stated that the company remains committed to its treasury strategy. He described the recent months as one of the fastest accumulation periods in the crypto sector.

He also expressed confidence in current market trends and recovery signals. “We have decided to slow down our pace of weekly accumulation,” Lee said. He linked the change to timing rather than a shift in outlook.

Ethereum Holdings and Treasury Composition

Bitmine’s total crypto and cash holdings stand at $13.4 billion. The company holds 201 Bitcoin alongside its Ether reserves. It also maintains $775 million in cash and equity stakes.

Those equity investments include Beast Industries and Eightco Holdings. However, ether remains the core asset in the company’s treasury. The firm focuses its strategy on Ethereum’s long-term supply position.

Bitmine has staked more than 4.7 million ETH from its total holdings. That amount represents over 90% of its ether balance. The staked assets currently hold an estimated value of $11.1 billion.

The company operates its MAVAN staking platform to manage these assets. It launched the platform earlier this year for institutional clients. Bitmine also uses MAVAN for its internal treasury operations.

Lee reiterated his outlook for Ether’s price performance. “If ETH closes above $2,100 at the end of May, this would be the third consecutive monthly gain,” he said. He added that such a streak has not occurred during a crypto bear market.

The company continues to monitor Ether’s monthly performance levels. Lee linked price strength to improving sentiment in software and growth stocks. He maintained that what he calls “crypto spring” has begun.