Two words from Michael Saylor moved the entire crypto market this weekend. On Sunday, May 10, the executive chairman of Strategy posted “Back to work. $BTC” on X alongside his firm’s famous Orange Dots chart, and suddenly everyone watching the Bitcoin space had the same question: how big is the next buy going to be?
The Post That Started It All
Saylor’s Sunday post on X was short, deliberate, and loaded with meaning. He paired the phrase with Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings tracker, a chart that has historically appeared right before the company files a new purchase disclosure with the SEC.
This was not a random social media moment. Markets have learned to treat Saylor’s “Back to work” posts as near-announcements. The pattern of a social media hint followed by a confirmed purchase has repeated enough times that traders now move on the signal alone, waiting for the Monday morning 8-K filing to confirm the numbers.
Just one week earlier, on May 3, Saylor had posted the opposite message: “No buys this week. Back to work next week.” That pause, the second break in Strategy’s near-weekly purchase streak this year, was directly tied to the company’s quiet period ahead of its Q1 2026 earnings call on May 5. Public companies typically avoid large capital transactions before an earnings release to comply with financial regulations. For Strategy, that temporary halt was routine procedure. Sunday’s post effectively flipped the switch back.
Michael Saylor Strategy Bitcoin accumulation orange dots chart
Where Strategy’s Bitcoin Treasury Stands Today
The numbers behind Strategy’s Bitcoin bet are staggering by any measure.
- Total holdings: 818,334 BTC as of May 10, 2026
- Total treasury value: Approximately $66.15 billion
- Average purchase price: $75,537 per BTC
- Unrealized gain: 7.02% as of May 10
- Year-to-date BTC growth: 22% in 2026
- BTC yield achieved in 2026 YTD: 9.4%
- Share of total Bitcoin supply: Approximately 4%
Strategy’s most recent confirmed purchase was made on April 27, when the firm bought 3,273 BTC for approximately $255 million at an average price of $77,906 per Bitcoin. That was itself a sharp slowdown from the company’s blockbuster $2.54 billion buy on April 20, when it snapped up 34,164 BTC in a single week.
Before the earnings pause, Strategy had been consistently stacking Bitcoin throughout all of April. The market had already begun to notice the deceleration before the buying stopped entirely. Now with the quiet period closed and Saylor back online, expectations for a fresh acquisition announcement on Monday, May 11, are running high.
The Earnings Call That Changed Everything
Saylor’s weekend post arrived in the middle of a much bigger story. Strategy’s Q1 2026 earnings call on May 5 sent a clear signal that the company’s approach to its Bitcoin treasury is evolving.
The headline from that call was jarring for longtime followers. Both Saylor and CEO Phong Le openly acknowledged that the company may sell BTC to fund preferred dividends, directly dismantling the “never sell” narrative the company itself had built over years. Le made the firm’s new position plain during the call.
“We will sell bitcoin when it’s advantageous to the company. We want to be net aggregators of bitcoin, increasing our total bitcoin, but more importantly, increasing our bitcoin per share.”
Saylor’s own framing was just as direct. “We’ll probably sell some Bitcoin to fund a dividend, just to inoculate the market, just to send the message that we did it,” he said. The announcement triggered a 4% drop in MSTR shares as some investors interpreted any potential BTC sales as a break from Strategy’s accumulation-only identity.
But Saylor quickly reframed it. In a post-earnings podcast interview, he summarized the arithmetic: buy 10 Bitcoin, sell one to fund dividends, buy 10 more, sell one more. “Even if we were to sell one bitcoin, we’d be buying 10 to 20 more,” he said. The net result, he argued, is continued growth in both total holdings and Bitcoin per share, a metric Strategy calls BPS.
The strategic pivot was driven by the rapid growth of STRC, Strategy’s perpetual preferred stock instrument. STRC carries an 11.5% annualized dividend yield and has scaled to $8.5 billion in roughly nine months. With those fixed cash obligations now a reality, CEO Le called the shift “math over ideology.”
Wall Street Is Watching Saylor’s Every Move
The “Back to work” post lands at a moment when Wall Street is paying closer attention to Strategy’s Bitcoin accumulation pace than ever before.
JPMorgan analysts led by managing director Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou published a report estimating that if the current pace continues, Strategy’s Bitcoin purchases could reach approximately $30 billion on an annualized basis in 2026. That would far exceed the roughly $22 billion the company bought in each of 2024 and 2025. Year to date, Strategy has already added 145,834 BTC worth approximately $11 billion, with much of that buying happening while Bitcoin traded below the firm’s estimated average cost.
“Strategy appears to have re-accelerated its Bitcoin purchases in April, extending a 2026 pattern of increasingly opportunistic buying, responsive to both market conditions and financing availability,” the JPMorgan analysts wrote.
TD Cowen also moved this week, raising its price target on MSTR from $385 to $395, citing the company’s increased use of STRC preferred stock issuance as making its Bitcoin accumulation strategy more capital-efficient. The company’s premium to net asset value has expanded to around 26% over the past two months, a dynamic that makes equity issuance more attractive and funnels more capital directly into Bitcoin purchases.
Analyst Taiki Maeda went further, predicting that the next buy could be as large as $3 billion based on Strategy’s ex-dividend buying patterns observed through March and April.
On prediction markets, Polymarket now prices an 82% probability that Strategy will sell some Bitcoin in 2026, up sharply from the low 30s before the May 5 earnings call. But even that number underscores the broader story: regardless of occasional sales, the market expects Strategy to remain an aggressive buyer of Bitcoin for the rest of the year.
What Comes Next for Strategy and Bitcoin
With the earnings blackout period now over, capital instruments in place, and Saylor’s signal fired, the Bitcoin community is watching the clock tick toward Monday morning.
Strategy’s accumulation announcements typically land at 8 a.m. on Mondays via SEC 8-K filings. That cadence has become so reliable that market participants treat it as a scheduled event. Bitcoin was trading near $80,901 on the morning of May 10, giving Strategy’s stack a modest but positive unrealized return heading into the expected disclosure.
There is also a broader market backdrop supporting the move. April delivered approximately $2 billion in net spot Bitcoin ETF inflows, the strongest month of 2026. May opened with four consecutive days of ETF net inflows, pushing BTC from the $67,000 range to above $81,000 and triggering over $300 million in crypto short liquidations when BTC broke $80K on May 4.
Strategy also carries $26.47 billion in remaining MSTR common stock issuance capacity as of late April, providing a substantial runway for continued Bitcoin purchases. The firm has raised $11.68 billion year to date across equity and preferred stock offerings to fund its treasury strategy.
What started as a business intelligence software company in 1989 has become the world’s most aggressive corporate Bitcoin machine. Three words, “Back to work,” now carry the weight of billions of dollars in potential market movement. For a company sitting on over $66 billion in Bitcoin and showing no signs of slowing down, the machine appears ready to fire again. The Bitcoin world is waiting to find out just how big this next move will be. Drop your thoughts in the comments below.
