MicroStrategy Buys Bitcoin Amid Market Sell-Off, Shares Plummet

According to a securities filing released on Monday, MicroStrategy acquired an additional 855 Bitcoin over the prior week, paying an average price of approximately $87,974 per token. This $75.3 million transaction further increased the company’s massive exposure to the digital asset, bringing its total holdings to roughly 712,647 BTC by the end of January 2026, up from 640,808 in late October 2025. The timing, however, was conspicuously challenging. The purchase coincided with a sharp sell-off that drove Bitcoin’s price below the company’s reported average acquisition cost of $76,052 per coin, briefly dipping toward $74,500.

The market reaction was immediate and severe. MSTR shares fell 8% on Monday as Bitcoin breached that critical average cost level. At its lowest point, the value of MicroStrategy’s total Bitcoin holdings stood at approximately $53.1 billion. A subsequent rebound in Bitcoin’s price to around $79,000 lifted the valuation of the company’s position beyond $55 billion, offering temporary relief but doing little to clarify the near-term direction for either the asset or the stock. This episode underscores the extreme sensitivity of MicroStrategy’s financial health to Bitcoin’s volatility, a direct result of its strategy to amass the cryptocurrency as its primary treasury asset.

The pressure on MicroStrategy’s equity has been unrelenting in 2025. The stock is down 48% year-to-date, a performance that crowns it as the worst performer in the entire Nasdaq 100 index. For context, the index’s second-worst stock, Charter Communications, has fallen 39% over the same period, highlighting the exceptional scale of MSTR’s underperformance. This decline is not an isolated short-term event. Over the past three months, MSTR has plummeted 43.4%, dramatically underperforming the broader Finance sector, which gained 4.3% over the same timeframe.

The weakness extends across Bitcoin-proxy stocks, but MicroStrategy’s fall has been the steepest. During that three-month period, other crypto-exposed companies like Riot Platforms (RIOT), CleanSpark (CLSK), and Coinbase Global (COIN) posted declines of 25.3%, 32.0%, and 41.1%, respectively. While this points to widespread sectoral headwinds, none have fallen as sharply as MicroStrategy, indicating that investors may be assigning a unique risk premium to its singular, leveraged bet on Bitcoin’s price appreciation, divorced from the operational metrics typical of other companies.

Amid these market challenges, MicroStrategy is scheduled to release its fourth-quarter 2025 results on Thursday. Wall Street expectations, as reflected in the Zacks Consensus Estimate, paint a picture of a company undergoing a profound financial transformation. Analysts project revenue of $119.6 million, representing a slight 0.91% decline from the year-earlier period, indicating modest top-line pressure on its legacy software business.

The dramatic shift, however, is expected in profitability. Earnings are projected at $46.02 per share, unchanged over the past month and representing a stunning reversal from a loss of $3.20 per share reported in the prior-year quarter. Analysts anticipate the report will reflect continued financial momentum driven largely by Bitcoin-related gains and what the company describes as disciplined capital allocation. This projected profitability is almost entirely tethered to the valuation of its Bitcoin treasury, making Thursday’s earnings call a critical event for management to address mounting concerns over its strategy’s sustainability in a volatile market.