rewrite this title Will Strategy Sell Bitcoin This Year? Traders Are Convinced After Saylor Comments – Decrypt

Will Strategy, the Bitcoin behemoth that has systematically accumulated more than $65 billion worth of BTC over the last six years, sell off some of its holdings this year? Users on prediction market platform Myriad increasingly believe it’ll happen.

Odds of the Virginia-based firm selling any BTC from its coffers this year have ballooned to 82% on Myriad—a product of Decrypt’s parent company, Dastan. That includes a gain of 69% in the last week of trading as the firm’s outspoken founder and chairman Michael Saylor said it “probably” would sell some Bitcoin. 

“We’ll probably sell some Bitcoin to fund a dividend just to inoculate the market—just to send the message that we did it,” Saylor said during the Strategy Q1 earnings call Q&A. His sentiments were echoed by Strategy President and CEO Phong Le, who said that the firm would sell Bitcoin when it was in the company’s and shareholders’ best interests. 

“We will sell Bitcoin when it’s advantageous to the company,” said Le on the earnings call. “We’re not going to sit back and just say, ‘We’ll never sell the Bitcoin.’”

The message is a distinct shift in tone from Saylor’s previous pleas to his followers on social media which urged them to “never sell their Bitcoin.” The Bitcoin bull once also posted that users should “sell a kidney” if they needed to, but to hold onto the top crypto asset. 

On Thursday, though, the Strategy frontman’s stance on X was, “Buy more Bitcoin than you sell.” 

But is Saylor’s recent commentary truly reflective of a strategy shift for the firm, or was he merely poking at skeptics? 

In new comments to Fortune, Saylor’s remarks appear closer to the former, supporting the fact that his firm—to date a steely fortress of Bitcoin—could ultimately sell the asset that has helped it rise to fame. 

“The haters… the skeptics and the short-sellers don’t recognize that we’re just selling a Bitcoin derivative, and we have the option to sell the Bitcoin,” he told the publication. He added that to defeat the false narrative that the firm would never sell, the firm has to “basically show that you’ll trade the Bitcoin back for the stock, or trade the Bitcoin to meet the liabilities.” 

Strategy posted a $12.54 billion Q1 net loss earlier this week, buoyed by massive unrealized losses on its Bitcoin holdings as the top crypto asset fell precipitously from its October all-time high of $126,080. It now sits 36.5% off the mark as it changes hands around $80,058 on Friday—roughly even in the last 24 hours of trading, and now up 12% in the last 30 days.