The question that has dominated the sector since June 2026 is whether a company holding Bitcoin on its balance sheet can be forced to sell it. The short answer is yes — but almost never for the reason people assume. There is no margin call waiting for Strategy or Metaplanet. There are dollar-denominated bills with due dates. And in 2026 that distinction stopped being theoretical: Strategy has now gone five consecutive weeks without buying Bitcoin, has sold 3,588 BTC to fund dividends, and holds $3.75B in cash that two years ago would have gone straight into BTC. This piece separates what forces a sale from what doesn't, with the verified timeline and five tests you can run yourself in the treasury directory. Data verified as of July 27, 2026.
What "forced to sell" actually means
In leveraged markets, "forced selling" has a precise meaning: you pledge an asset as collateral, the asset falls, the lender demands more margin, and if you can't post it the lender liquidates your position without asking. That mechanism is what destroys leveraged funds and derivatives traders, and it's the one most headlines project onto listed treasury companies.
But the debt of large Bitcoin treasuries doesn't work that way. Strategy's convertible bonds do not pledge the BTC: they are unsecured corporate obligations with no specific claim on the Bitcoin. Nobody can touch those 843,775 BTC because the price fell. What does exist are three real pressures, and none of them is a margin call:
- Preferred dividends in cash. Perpetual preferreds promise a dollar coupon. That payment comes due whether Bitcoin rises or falls. - Interest and debt maturities. Convertibles pay coupons, and if the stock sits below the conversion price at maturity, the principal has to be repaid in cash rather than shares. - Operating expenses and put options that let bondholders demand repayment on specific dates.
So the right question isn't "can they be liquidated?" but "where does the dollar for the next payment come from?" If the only available source is selling Bitcoin, the sale is forced in every way that matters, even if it is legally voluntary.
Strategy's 2026 timeline
Strategy is the case study because it is the largest and the most transparent: it files an 8-K every week. The sequence this year, reconstructed from its own filings:
- June 1: sells 32 BTC (~$2.5M). A token amount, but its first sale since 2022 — back in December 2022 MicroStrategy sold 704 BTC to harvest tax losses. The market reads it as a cash-strain signal. - June 5: Bitcoin breaks below $60,000, roughly half its October 2025 all-time highATHAll-Time High: the highest price an asset has ever reached.View term → of ~$126,000. - June: Strategy's enterprise mNAVmNAVMultiple on Net Asset Value: how a treasury company trades relative to its BTC.View term → falls below 1. Its STRC preferred, engineered to trade at $100 par, touches $71.25. - June 29: announces the Digital Credit Capital Framework. It formalizes a dollar reserve earmarked only for preferred dividends and interest, with a floor of twelve months of coverage; raises STRC to 12%; authorizes $1.0B of preferred repurchases and $1.0B of class A stock; and creates a Bitcoin monetization program of up to $1.25B. That last item is what changes the narrative: for the first time, selling BTC is a declared tool. - July 6: sells 3,588 BTC for ~$216M (~$60,168 average) to fund preferred dividends. It is the largest Bitcoin disposal in its history. The reserve lands at $2.55B. - July 26–27: the weekly 8-K states plainly that no Bitcoin was purchased that week. Holdings: 843,775 BTC, aggregate cost $63.69B, average entry price $75,476. The dollar reserve rises to $3.75B, and 5,429,160 MSTR shares have been sold for $544.5M net.
Translated: the capital-raising machine still works, but the money no longer buys Bitcoin — it feeds the reserve. That's the fifth straight week without purchases; the full position history is in how many Bitcoin Strategy holds.
The arithmetic that forces the issue
This is the heart of it, and it's simple arithmetic. Strategy owes roughly $1.76B a year in preferred dividends and debt interest. That amount is paid in dollars, on fixed dates, to holders who do not accept bitcoin as payment. With 843,775 BTC at ~$64,400 the company sits on $54.35B of assets, but not one dollar of that is liquid until it sells.
The obligations, instrument by instrument, as of July 27, 2026:
STRK — 8% annual dividend, quarterly, convertible. The oldest preferred in the family.
STRF — 10% annual, quarterly, and cumulative: if Strategy skips a payment the obligation doesn't vanish, it accrues. This is the instrument that leaves the least discretion.
STRD — 10% annual, quarterly, non-cumulative: legally Strategy could omit a payment without defaulting, at the cost of destroying its access to credit markets.
STRC — 12% annual since July 1, 2026, paid in two installments a month, with the rate reset monthly to defend a $99–$100 target range. The most expensive and the most sensitive.
STRE — the euro-denominated preferred, carrying a 10% coupon in EUR, launched in November 2025 for European investors. It adds something the others don't have: currency risk, because the reserve earns dollars while the payment is due in euros.
Convertibles — over $8B outstanding, with low coupons but with maturities and put options that turn into real cash outflows if MSTR trades below the conversion price.
The detailed comparison of each preferred, with live prices and next payment dates, lives in the preferreds hub; if the instrument is new to you, start with Bitcoin preferred stocks explained and the STRC vs SATA comparison.
The three levers pulled before touching Bitcoin
No treasury companyCorporate TreasuryA company that adopts Bitcoin as a primary or significant balance-sheet asset.View term → sells BTC as a first option. The order of preference is always the same, and knowing it tells you which rung each company is standing on:
Lever 1 — issue equity (ATM). Sell new shares into the market and use the proceeds to buy Bitcoin or to fill the reserve. It's the favorite lever because it creates no debt and no tax event. Strategy is still using it: $544.5M net in the latest reported week.
Lever 2 — the dollar reserve. Cash set aside in advance to cover obligations. Strategy formalized it on June 29 with a twelve-month coverage floor; as of July 26 it holds $3.75B, more than two years of obligations at the current run rate. That cushion is large — and it is the best evidence that the company is not against the wall today.
Lever 3 — sell Bitcoin. The last resort, now explicitly authorized up to $1.25B. It gets pulled when the first two aren't enough, or when their cost is higher.
Why sub-1 mNAV changes everything
Here's the technical detail almost nobody spells out: lever 1 stops working when mNAV falls below 1.
mNAV compares the company's market capitalization (plus net debt) with the market value of its Bitcoin. Above 1, the market pays a premium: each share issued raises more dollars than it represents in BTC, the company buys more Bitcoin per share, and existing shareholders' bitcoin-per-share rises. That is the entire magic of the model, and the reason a shareholder accepted dilutionDilutionThe reduction in a shareholder's ownership percentage when new shares are issued.View term → in the first place.
Below 1 the sign flips. Issuing shares at a discount means handing over more Bitcoin per share than you take in: dilution destroys value instead of creating it. The company is left with two options — stop issuing, and lose its cash engine, or issue anyway and hurt its own shareholders.
That is the mechanism that converts a price decline into pressure on the Bitcoin held on the balance sheet. There is no margin call; there is an engine that switches off precisely when it is needed most. The full calculation is in mNAV explained, and you can see each company's current multiple at /en/mnav.
Five measurable tests
Instead of reading headlines, measure. These five indicators, in this order, tell you whether a treasury company is close to an unwanted sale:
1. Months of reserve coverage. Available cash divided by annual dollar obligations. Strategy: $3.75B / $1.76B is roughly 25 months. Below twelve months the risk starts to matter; below six, it becomes the headline.
2. mNAV. Above 1.2 the company funds itself comfortably. Between 1 and 1.2 the margin is thin. Below 1, the ATM no longer helps.
3. Cumulative vs non-cumulative dividends. Cumulative (STRF) genuinely binds; non-cumulative (STRD) leaves legal room at a reputational cost. A company whose obligations are mostly cumulative has less air.
4. Maturity and put calendar. Total debt matters less than how much comes due in the next twelve months and at what conversion price. Debt maturing in 2029 with the stock above the strike isn't a problem; a put six months out with the stock crushed is.
5. Distance from average entry price. Strategy bought at an average of $75,476 while Bitcoin trades near $64,400: the position is roughly 15% underwater, with about $9.33B in unrealized losses. A company sitting on losses can't frame a sale as profit-taking, which makes every sale politically expensive.
You can project the first four against price declines in the stress test and track the aggregate in indicators. To read a specific balance sheet, the guide is how to read a Bitcoin treasury balance sheet.
What is NOT a forced sale
It's worth being equally strict in the other direction, because reading every sale as capitulation is as common an error as the opposite:
- Tax optimization. The 704 BTC sold in December 2022 were sold to realize losses and recover taxes, with a subsequent repurchase. That's accounting, not weakness. - Opportunistic rotation. Selling to buy back lower, or selling BTC to repurchase your own stock when it trades at a steep discount to its Bitcoin, raises bitcoin-per-share. It is the exact opposite of a liquidation. - Ordinary treasury management. An operating company converting part of its BTC into cash for payroll or capex is doing its job. - Custodian changes or wallet consolidation. On-chain movements that are not sales at all, and are constantly mistaken for them.
The practical difference between a forced and a discretionary sale is one question: would the company have done the same with Bitcoin at $120,000? If the answer is no, the pressure is real. The contrast with companies that hold the never-sell commitment is in HODL stocks.
The rest of the sector: two contradictory facts
What makes July 2026 fascinating is that both opposing headlines are true at once.
On one side, the pressure is broad: roughly one in four Bitcoin treasury companies trades below mNAV 1 — the market values them at less than the Bitcoin they hold. For those companies the ATM lever is switched off, and any dollar obligation gets paid from reserves or from BTC.
On the other, accumulation hasn't stopped. According to River data, the second quarter of 2026 was the largest corporate buying quarter on record, with roughly 110,000–115,000 BTC added. And the aggregate we track daily is still at highs: 1,285,045 BTC held by 179 listed companies, 6.12% of the 21 million maximum supply. What changed isn't the volume, it's who's buying: less concentration in Strategy, more mid-caps, and new entrants across Asia and Latin America. The full map is in Bitcoin treasury companies: the complete list.
That combination — a sector accumulating more than ever while a quarter of its members trade at a discount — is the definition of a consolidation phase, not a collapse.
What to watch in the coming weeks
Strategy reports second-quarter results this week, and three specifics matter more than the accounting profit: whether the reserve keeps growing or starts being drawn down, whether more of the $1.25B monetization program has been used, and whether the ATM is still placing paper with mNAV where it is. Any of the three will say more about real risk than the headline attached to the release.
In the meantime, the healthy way to follow this is by data rather than narrative: treasuries for the positions, /en/mnav for premiums and discounts, preferreds for obligations and next payments, and the stress test to see what happens to each balance sheet if Bitcoin falls another 30%.
Data as of July 27, 2026, verified against Strategy's 8-K filings of July 27 and July 6, its June 29 press release, CoinDesk and River reporting, and our own treasury dataset as of July 26. This article is reviewed monthly. SatsIntel is informational only: nothing above is financial advice.
