Michael Saylor Pauses Bitcoin Buys: What Does Strategy Know?
Key Takeaways
- Strategy currently commands 640,031 BTC worth $80 billion with an unrealized profit of $32.7 billion.
- The firm’s pauses in 2025 have preceded market volatility, though only after making major purchases during market highs.
- Bitcoin hit a new ATH of $125,284 in the first week of October.
Leading Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy has halted its BTC purchases for the first time since July this year.
This move comes just as bullish momentum sends token prices to all-time highs (ATHs) once again this year.
But is it a warning sign that prices are set to decline, or has the firm simply concluded that now isn’t the best time?
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Strategy Cooling on Bitcoin
As per the firm’s boss, Michael Saylor, Strategy abstained from its regular BTC buys last week whilst showing off its $79 billion (ignoring his typo) portfolio.
This is the first time that the Bitcoin behemoth has halted purchases since the final week of July 2025, a bullish month that saw BTC repeatedly hit new ATHs.
That month, Strategy made just three purchases: 4,225 BTC at $111,827 per token, 6,220 BTC at $118,940, and a massive 21,021 BTC at $117,256.
Prices jumped from $107,000 to $115,000 in the first ten days of the month. By mid-July, it had hit yet another high just above $119,800.
At the beginning of August, BTC would sink from this high to $113,000 before soaring above $123,000 to mark another ATH on August 14.
The price would ultimately slump from this peak and failed to climb back above $115,000 until the start of October.
Seemingly learning from July’s high price purchases, bullish momentum prompted Saylor to pump the brakes again in August, making just 3 purchases that month.
They totalled 3,666 BTC, with the final one being a 3,081 BTC buy when it was trading at $115,829.
Between then and October, Strategy’s $3.67 billion spend in July averaged out at $116,007 per token, meaning that these acquisitions have been running at a loss for over 2 months.
Lessons Learned?
This wouldn’t be the first time that the firm has slowed its typically aggressive BTC spending in 2025.
If we look back to February, the firm moved cautiously with just two purchases that amounted to 27,989 BTC worth $2.72 billion at an average of $97,384 per token.
Market activity was frenetic at the time, and in March, Bitcoin would proceed to slump below this average and bottom out at $76,000 in April, steeping February’s buys into a long-term loss that didn’t recover until May 7, when BTC finally rose above $97,000.
Arguably, Strategy’s latest pause could be a reflection of the lessons learned from its overly ambitious buys, which, for some time, were in the red.
Given the timing of its buys and pauses, however, it could be argued that Strategy is less of a ‘canary in a coalmine’ that is smart enough to anticipate a market decline, but more a firm that is still adjusting to 2025’s absurd and unpredictable momentum.
In fact, in 2024, the firm was averaging just 2 purchases a month, if that, and its ‘aggressive era’ began on the heels of Donald Trump’s election victory in Nov. 2024.
In December that year, Strategy made five separate buys totalling 54,431 BTC worth $5.87 billion. BTC was trading between $95,000 and $107,000 at this time.
Strategy is perhaps maturing from its’ post-election hype, and appears to be applying hard-learned lessons from earlier missteps.
It’s less a prescient market indicator and more a strategic decision for the firm, one that may allow them to optimize capital deployment, minimize short-term downsides, and perhaps mitigate risks from overpaying during heightened market periods.
Bitcoin hit a new ATH above $125,000 on Oct. 6, which comes just after the firm announced its BTC…
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