Michael Saylor’s Strategy acquired 4,603 Bitcoin for $370 million, marking the first acquisition from the largest corporate Bitcoin holder in two months.

Strategy acquired 4,603 Bitcoin (BTC) at an average purchase price of $80,318, pushing its holdings to 845,050 BTC, acquired for a total of $63.3 billion at an average price of $75,413, according to a Monday 8-k filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Bitcoin purchase was funded by the net proceeds of a 602 million MSTR common stock sale. The company used $30 million of the net proceeds to increase its USD Cash reserve and $151.8 million to repurchase its preferred STRC stock.

Nasdaq-traded MSTR was up less than 1% in Monday’s pre-market activity, after dropping more than 7% on Friday.

The move marks Strategy’s first corporate Bitcoin acquisition since mid-June, when the company last acquired 1,587 BTC for roughly $100 million. 

On Sunday, Strategy’s co-founder and executive chairman, Michael Saylor, signaled that the company will resume accumulating Bitcoin, tweeting “We’re Back” in a widely viewed X post. Saylor has been known for posting cryptic weekend teasers before official announcements of the company’s larger treasury moves.

Strategy’s perpetual preferred stock, STRC, gained 0.44% in pre-market activity on Monday, to change hands at $97.33, or a 2.67% discount to its intended $100 par value, Yahoo Finance data shows.

STRC is one of Strategy’s main mechanisms to fund its Bitcoin accumulation. Trading below par limits Strategy’s ability to raise funds through STRC sales. It may also force the company to further increase its nominal dividend rate to attract buyers and protect STRC’s price.

In its June 29 8-K filing, Strategy unveiled a capital framework allowing Bitcoin sales to fund dividends and increased the annual dividend rate on its STRC preferred stock to 12%. Strategy disclosed the sale of 32 Bitcoin in early June, as its first reported Bitcoin sale since the 2022 tax-loss transaction.

Related: Standard Chartered wavers on $100K Bitcoin year-end call, says it may be ‘too low’

Wallets linked to North Korea’s Lazarus Group have sold more than $30 million in Bitcoin through Hyperliquid over three weeks as U.S. officials and Payward explore regulated access to the platform.

Lazarus-linked wallets convert Bitcoin into ETH and SOL

Arkham blockchain data, wallets associated with the North Korean state-sponsored Lazarus Group sold more than $30 million in Bitcoin on Hyperliquid during the past three weeks.

The wallets used proceeds from the Bitcoin sales to purchase Ethereum and Solana before sending the assets to centralized exchanges, including Kraken, LBank, and KuCoin, according to the blockchain analysis. Crypto investigator ZachXBT first identified the addresses in 2024, while Arkham later labeled them as connected to Lazarus.

Public blockchain records show transfers between addresses but do not reveal who controls the receiving exchange accounts. CoinDesk said it could not identify the account holders or determine whether the exchanges knew about the reported source of the funds.

Kraken said compliance sits at the center of its operations and that it continuously monitors blockchain activity with support from analytics providers. According to the exchange, its controls are designed to identify and block assets connected to sanctioned wallets before they reach the platform.

LBank said it uses industry-standard compliance tools for continuous monitoring. The exchange described illicit transfers across platforms, blockchains and jurisdictions as an industry problem that no single company can independently detect or resolve.

KuCoin said it could not confirm the reported activity without reviewing the underlying wallet data. The exchange also cautioned that public blockchain records do not show every step taken after assets arrive at a centralized platform, including account restrictions, regulatory reports and other risk controls.

Hyperliquid activity raises US sanctions questions

The reported transfers carry a direct U.S. angle because the Treasury Department has sanctioned Lazarus Group and identified it as a cyber organization controlled by North Korea’s government.

U.S. authorities have linked Lazarus to several digital-asset thefts, including the $625 million Ronin Network attack in 2022. As previously reported by crypto.news, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper recently cited North Korean hacking groups while arguing that regulated domestic crypto markets could give U.S. law enforcement better access to customer and transaction records.

Using a decentralized venue can complicate enforcement because Hyperliquid allows users to connect a wallet and trade without opening a traditional brokerage account. The protocol’s public blockchain still records transactions, allowing firms such as Arkham to trace transfers between labeled addresses.

The presence of a sanctioned actor’s assets on a decentralized platform does not establish that Hyperliquid assisted the activity or knew who controlled the wallets. CoinDesk’s report also did not establish that Kraken, LBank or KuCoin credited the transferred assets to unrestricted customer accounts.

For U.S. regulators, any plan to offer Hyperliquid-linked products domestically would need to address sanctions screening, customer identification and account-level controls. Wallet checks can identify previously labeled addresses, but funds may pass through several assets or addresses before arriving at another venue.

A recent Hyperliquid testnet deployment showed how a permissioned version of its infrastructure might operate. In August, a deployer using Kraken’s name whitelisted 10 wallets and tested controls for canceling orders, reducing positions, and moving collateral.

Neither Kraken nor Hyperliquid had confirmed ownership of that deployment when the report appeared. Because Hyperliquid’s testnet permits outside deployments, the Kraken name alone did not prove that the exchange created or operated it.

Payward discusses regulated Hyperliquid access

At the same time, Bloomberg reported that Kraken parent Payward is in advanced discussions with Hyperliquid Labs over offering selected perpetual contracts to American traders through Bitnomial, its CFTC-regulated derivatives business.

People familiar with the talks told Bloomberg that Payward had presented the Commodity Futures Trading Commission with an outline of the proposed structure. Any agreement would still require regulatory approval, while the financial terms remain unknown. Payward and Hyperliquid Labs declined to comment to Bloomberg.

President Donald Trump brought the possible U.S. entry into public view during an Aug. 19 White House event. Referring to CFTC Chair Michael Selig, Trump said he understood that the regulator was working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States in a “fully compliant and legal fashion.”

A Payward arrangement would give eligible U.S. customers access through a registered operator rather than through Hyperliquid’s permissionless interface. Commodity derivatives offered to American retail traders generally must use CFTC-regulated entities, and wallet screening alone does not replace exchange, clearing, and brokerage requirements.

Payward already has the regulatory infrastructure needed to operate in the domestic derivatives market. The company completed its Bitnomial purchase in May after agreeing to pay as much as $550 million in cash and stock.

The acquisition gave Payward control of a designated contract market, derivatives clearing organization and futures commission merchant. Together, the three registrations cover trading, clearing and brokerage services under CFTC oversight.

Kraken then launched regulated perpetuals for eligible U.S. customers in June. The service allows supported users to trade spot, margin, traditional futures and perpetual futures through Kraken Pro while using Bitnomial’s regulated structure.

Hyperliquid leads decentralized perpetual trading

Hyperliquid operates its principal exchange through HyperCore, an on-chain trading system that handles order matching, margin calculations and liquidations. Users trade from connected crypto wallets, while the platform’s main permissionless interface does not require a conventional brokerage account.

Perpetual futures differ from dated futures because they have no fixed expiry. Funding payments between long and short traders help keep contract prices close to the value of their underlying assets, allowing positions to remain open as long as margin requirements are met.

DefiLlama data showed Hyperliquid had processed approximately $5.19 trillion in cumulative perpetual volume at the time of writing. Its perpetual markets recorded about $60.44 billion in seven-day volume and $204.95 billion during the previous 30 days.

Open interest stood at roughly $13.3 billion, representing the notional value of outstanding perpetual positions. DefiLlama also recorded more than $32.6 billion in cumulative liquidations on the platform, including approximately $2.25 billion over the preceding 30 days.

Beyond markets operated by the core protocol, Hyperliquid Improvement Proposal 3 allows outside builders to launch independent perpetual exchanges using HyperCore. Deployers select their contracts, collateral, leverage limits, funding settings, and price sources after staking 500,000 HYPE.

Validators can slash the stake when a deployer manipulates an oracle or violates market rules. HIP-3 operators receive half of the trading fees generated by their markets, while newer permission tools tested on the network could let individual deployers restrict access to approved wallets.

Strive, a publicly traded asset manager and Bitcoin treasury company, added 1,800 Bitcoin to its balance sheet last week, accelerating a buy program that has helped it rank among the world’s largest publicly traded corporate holders of the asset.

The company bought the BTC between Aug. 24 and Aug. 28 for roughly $143 million, paying an average price of $79,431 per coin (including fees and expenses). CEO Matt Cole confirmed the acquisition on Monday via X: https://x.com/ColeMacro/status/2094396002308440227.

Key takeaways

• Strive purchased about 1,800 BTC over Aug. 24–Aug. 28 for approximately $143 million at an average of $79,431 per BTC.
• Total holdings rose to 23,156 BTC from 21,356 BTC a week earlier, showing faster accumulation across a short window.
• The latest inflow increased Strive’s BTC exposure by roughly 8.4% in five business days, according to Adam Livingston.
• With the new buys, Strive moved ahead of Bullish to become the fifth-largest publicly traded corporate Bitcoin holder, based on industry data from BitcoinTreasuries.net.
• Strive’s purchases align with a broader market rebound that followed a U.S. Treasury announcement on bond buybacks.

Strive’s accelerated accumulation lifts it into the top tier

Strive’s latest acquisition expands its Bitcoin strategy beyond a slow, incremental approach. The purchases increased its total holdings to 23,156 BTC, up from 21,356 BTC reported a week earlier. Earlier reporting from Cointelegraph noted that Strive had added 1,110 BTC the previous week for about $81.5 million at an average of $73,409 per coin (Cointelegraph).

Adam Livingston, an adviser to Saturn Credit, highlighted the pace of change after the most recent buys. In his post, he said the latest purchase increased Strive’s holdings by approximately 8.4% within just five business days (https://x.com/AdamBLiv/status/2094404735474295249).

For investors tracking corporate treasuries, the key point isn’t only the size of the purchase, but how quickly it is happening relative to recent baselines. Rapid accumulation can also signal that a company sees improved risk conditions, more favorable liquidity, or a strategy shift from opportunistic buying toward consistent treasury scaling.

Surpassing Bullish for fifth-largest publicly traded holder

The updated Strive balance also changes the standings among listed Bitcoin treasuries. According to industry data compiled at BitcoinTreasuries.net, Strive’s latest buys pushed it past Bullish—an exchange and digital asset infrastructure firm—making it the fifth-largest publicly traded corporate holder of Bitcoin.

This matters because position in these rankings is closely watched by market participants: it can affect perceived credibility of treasury strategies, influence how investors interpret management discipline around Bitcoin exposure, and contribute to the narrative of institutionalization across the sector.

Corporate buying follows a market rebound

Strive’s purchases come as Bitcoin and risk assets rebounded broadly after Aug. 19, when the U.S. Treasury Department announced plans to double the size of certain long-term bond buybacks. The move helped reduce Treasury yields and supported a return of risk appetite, with Bitcoin rallying more than 23% to a recent high above $81,000, as noted in Cointelegraph’s market coverage (Cointelegraph markets).

While treasury purchases do not need a specific catalyst, correlations between macro conditions and corporate activity are frequently discussed in crypto markets. When yields fall and liquidity improves, companies that treat Bitcoin as a treasury asset may find it easier to justify additional exposure—particularly if market volatility cools.

Strategy’s renewed buying underscores the broader trend

Strive is not alone. Michael Saylor’s Strategy—described as the largest corporate Bitcoin holder—announced Monday that it resumed buying BTC for the first time since June. Cointelegraph reported that Strategy acquired 4,603 Bitcoin at an average price of $80,318, per its announcement (Cointelegraph).

That purchase lifted Strategy’s holdings back above 845,000 BTC after four Bitcoin sales since May, reversing a temporary reduction in exposure. Together with Strive’s accelerated accumulation, the renewed buying from a major benchmark treasury adds weight to a theme seen across the corporate segment: listed companies appear willing to increase Bitcoin exposure when market conditions are supportive.

At the same time, the Strategy example also highlights an important tension. Corporate treasuries can be both active buyers and occasional sellers, meaning investors should pay attention not just to net accumulation, but also to the operational or capital-planning drivers behind any reductions.

For the near term, traders and long-term holders will likely watch whether Strive sustains this faster pace of buying over the next several weekly reporting windows, and whether other large corporate treasuries continue to add after recent rebounds—especially as macro conditions that helped fuel the move in yields remain in focus.

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