Strategy sells shares, not Bitcoin

July 20, 2026

 

Reading time: 5 minutes

Strategy shields its Bitcoin reserve through MSTR dilution

Key points:

  • Strategy sold 2.73 million MSTR shares for $263.5 million between July 13 and July 19, raising its U.S. dollar reserve to $3.225 billion while keeping its 843,775 BTC untouched.

  • Two consecutive weeks of equity sales increased the reserve by $675 million and diluted common shareholders by nearly 2%, strengthening coverage for preferred dividends and debt interest.

News - Strategy chose equity over Bitcoin for a second straight week, using its at-the-market program to reinforce liquidity.

The company increased its cash reserve by $225 million to $3.225 billion. The fund covers preferred-share dividends and debt interest totaling about $1.76 billion annually, giving Strategy roughly 22 months of coverage against a 12-month board minimum.

Its Bitcoin holdings remained at 843,775 BTC, acquired for $63.69 billion at an average price of $75,476 per coin.

Dilution buys a longer runway - The latest raise followed $466.7 million in MSTR sales the previous week. Together, the issuances created roughly 7.6 million new shares, reducing existing investors’ proportional ownership by close to 2%.

Strategy still has about $23.5 billion available under its common-stock ATM program, leaving room to raise more capital without selling BTC.

Bitcoin stays behind the buffer - The reserve is intended to limit forced Bitcoin sales during market stress. Earlier in July, Strategy sold 3,588 BTC for about $216 million after adopting a framework that permits up to $1.25 billion in Bitcoin sales to support liquidity and payments.

Peter Schiff criticized the company for protecting preferred holders at common shareholders’ expense. The filing makes the trade-off clearer: stronger payment protection and an untouched Bitcoin stack, funded through further MSTR dilution.

Cardano’s governance milestone leaves ADA stuck near $0.16

Key points:

  • Cardano activated the Van Rossem hard fork on July 18, moving to Protocol Version 11 through its first upgrade proposed, debated, and ratified entirely via onchain governance.

  • The upgrade lowered smart contract execution costs and prepared Cardano for Ouroboros Leios, but ADA remained near $0.16 as weak momentum and cautious derivatives positioning limited its response.

News - Cardano completed a historic transfer of protocol control without producing a sustained ADA rally.

Van Rossem moved the mainnet from Protocol Version 10 to Version 11 at 21:44 UTC without reported downtime. The upgrade improved Plutus functionality, reduced smart contract execution costs, tightened ledger validation rules, and laid the groundwork for the Dijkstra era and Ouroboros Leios.

For everyday users, ADA transactions, wallet operations, and transfer fees remain unchanged.

The vote mattered more than the code - Van Rossem became Cardano’s first hard fork approved end-to-end by network participants rather than coordinated by founding developer Input Output.

Stake pool operators backed the proposal by about 53%, while roughly 93% of block production had already moved to compatible software, exceeding the required 85% active-stake threshold. The result proved Cardano can govern its own upgrades, but the tight operator vote also foreshadowed a harder coordination test before Leios arrives later in 2026.

ADA refuses to follow the milestone - ADA traded near $0.162, remaining below the middle Bollinger Band around $0.1688, while its RSI of 45.62 stayed under the neutral 50 level.

Positive funding near 0.0061% offered some support, but a long-to-short ratio around 0.90 showed shorts still outnumbered longs. ADA must reclaim $0.17 before challenging the $0.188 to $0.19 resistance zone, while losing $0.16 could expose the $0.149 to $0.15 area.

Hyperliquid sets a $30M gate for permissionless prediction markets

Key points:

  • Hyperliquid plans to let anyone deploy prediction markets under an upcoming HIP-4 enhancement, first on testnet and later on mainnet, using validator-approved outcome templates.

  • Deployers must stake 500,000 HYPE, worth about $30.4 million, and risk slashing for poorly defined or incorrectly settled markets, while earning up to 50% of trading fees.

News - Hyperliquid is turning prediction markets from a validator-controlled product into a permissionless market primitive, but access will require substantial capital.

HIP-4 introduced outcome trading in May. Its next enhancement will allow outside deployers to define and settle markets using templates approved by validators, with each deployer initially limited to 100 outcomes.

Validator-run markets will remain available, although Hyperliquid said there will “ideally” be fewer than 10 each year.

Permissionless does not mean unrestricted - The 500,000 HYPE stake will remain locked for six months and may be slashed through a validator vote if a market is poorly defined, settled incorrectly, or remains incorrectly unsettled for more than a week.

The structure mirrors Hyperliquid’s permissionless perpetual markets by rewarding well-defined, correctly settled markets while imposing financial penalties for failures.

Expansion meets weaker HYPE flows - The rollout targets a prediction market sector dominated by Kalshi and Polymarket, with World Cup activity helping generate more than $50 billion in June wagers.

Hyperliquid recorded only $176 million during that period, leaving a considerable gap to close. The announcement also arrived after HYPE ETFs posted their first weekly outflow since launching in May, losing $7.26 million and ending a nine-week inflow streak.

HYPE fell more than 8% over the week before recovering above $60, placing the product expansion against a backdrop of weaker ETF flows and recent token underperformance.

South Korea moves its CBDC pilot toward real bank payments

Key points:

  • The Bank of Korea may begin Project Hangang’s second phase as early as September, expanding the CBDC pilot from seven to nine banks and testing real transactions with tokenized deposits.

  • New trials will include peer-to-peer transfers, biometric authentication, automated deposit-token features, and government subsidy payments as officials explore potential commercialization.

News - South Korea is preparing to move its central bank digital currency experiment beyond payment infrastructure and into everyday banking use.

Project Hangang uses a wholesale CBDC issued by the Bank of Korea as the settlement asset behind deposit tokens created and managed by commercial banks. Consumers can then use those bank-issued tokens for payments without directly holding the central bank asset.

Kyongnam Bank and iM Bank will join the existing lenders, bringing participation to nine banks.

The banks sit between users and the central bank - The Bank of Korea will provide the underlying institutional infrastructure, while participating lenders handle deposit-token issuance, management, and customer-facing services.

The second phase will test transfers between users, biometric verification, automated token functions, and subsidy disbursements. The first phase, conducted from April through June 2025, drew about 81,000 participants and processed 114,880 transactions.

Digital finance expands under tighter supervision - The pilot advances as South Korean banks prepare infrastructure for possible won-backed stablecoins, while the government plans to classify cryptocurrencies as national assets.

That expansion is arriving alongside stronger enforcement. Financial authorities investigated more than 40 unfair-trading cases over two years and reported or referred 30 to investigative agencies, which identified 25 suspects.

Together, the initiatives show South Korea building digital-payment rails while increasing scrutiny of the markets operating around them.

Wall Street’s New Shopping List

Big money is rotating into a select group of stocks for the second half of 2026.

MarketBeat’s analysts tracked the move and identified 10 companies attracting fresh capital right now.

The updated 10 Best Stocks to Own in 2026 report lays out the tickers, trends, and catalysts.

Did you know?

  • Bitcoin’s data door widened without rewriting the protocol: Bitcoin Core 30.0 raised its default data-carrier limit from 83 to 100,000 bytes and began accepting multiple OP_RETURN outputs for relay and mining. The change affected Bitcoin Core’s standard transaction policy, not Bitcoin’s consensus rules, and node operators can still override the default.

  • Ethereum’s cheaper data comes with an expiration clock: Blob data posted by Ethereum rollups only has to remain available through consensus clients for 4,096 epochs, or roughly 18 days, after which it may be pruned. Unlike permanent calldata, this intentionally temporary storage helps blobs offer rollups a cheaper way to publish transaction data.

  • USDC’s public rails still have a private gatekeeper: Circle’s EVM stablecoin contracts include a blacklister role that can prevent listed addresses from sending or receiving tokens, while a separate pauser role can halt transfers across the contract. USDC therefore moves across public blockchains while retaining issuer-controlled compliance switches at the token level.

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Top 3 coins of the day

Pump.fun (PUMP)

Key points:

  • PUMP surged from $0.00178 toward $0.00200 on breakout volume, then held between $0.00190 and $0.00202 as buyers defended most of the advance.

  • Price remained above a bullishly aligned MA Ribbon, while the Awesome Oscillator expanded to 0.000260. Resistance sits at $0.00200 to $0.00207, with support at $0.00190 and $0.00178 to $0.00180.

What you should know:

Momentum did not fade after PUMP cleared its prior $0.00165 to $0.00167 base. The breakout accelerated on one of the chart’s largest volume bars, while the Awesome Oscillator expanded to 0.000260 and the MA Ribbon remained fully bullish, with the 20 SMA at $0.00174 leading the slower averages. The move coincided with trader Ansem publicly disclosing a sizable PUMP position after the token reclaimed roughly $0.00167 and publishing a bullish thesis centered on Pump.fun’s revenue leverage to renewed Solana retail activity. Sentiment also benefited from clarification that the July 15 team and investor allocation follows gradual three-year linear vesting rather than an immediate market release. A close above $0.00207 strengthens continuation, while $0.00190 is the first level buyers need to defend.

Pudgy Penguins (PENGU)

Key points:

  • PENGU recovered from roughly $0.00575 and reclaimed its shorter moving averages before testing the 200 SMA and resistance at $0.00632 to $0.00640.

  • The Squeeze Momentum histogram turned positive at 0.000158 as volume improved. Support sits at $0.00620, followed by the $0.00606 to $0.00611 MA cluster.

What you should know:

PENGU’s recovery reached its first serious test at the 200 SMA near $0.00632. Price had climbed from the $0.00575 area, reclaimed the 20, 50, and 100 SMAs, and pushed into the $0.00632 to $0.00640 resistance band as the Squeeze Momentum histogram turned positive at 0.000158. Volume improved during the advance, but remained below the chart’s largest recent spikes, leaving the breakout unconfirmed. The move coincided with Pudgy Penguins rolling out Pengu plush toys across U.S. Target stores, with each product linking buyers to Pudgy World through a promotional card and QR code. A sustained hold above $0.00640 opens room toward $0.00650, while a drop below $0.00620 exposes the short-term MA cluster near $0.00606 to $0.00611.

Zcash (ZEC)

Key points:

  • ZEC’s rebound failed below $560, sending price back to the $525 to $530 support zone as the Parabolic SAR flipped above price at $563.

  • Stochastic RSI fell into oversold territory at 9.25 and 6.39. A recovery above $540 could ease pressure, while a break below $525 exposes $510 to $515.

What you should know:

The rally’s latest test shifted from chasing upside to defending what remained of the move. After climbing from roughly $380 to near $585, ZEC formed a lower rebound around $560 and slid back toward $529. The Parabolic SAR stayed above price at $563, confirming short-term downside pressure, while Stochastic RSI sank to 9.25 and 6.39, leaving momentum oversold but without a confirmed reversal. Attention now turns to the Ironwood hard fork scheduled for July 28, which is expected to seal off the legacy Orchard pool, while zcashd’s July 18 end-of-life pushed infrastructure toward newer node software. Holding $525 to $530 keeps a relief bounce possible; losing that floor brings $510 to $515 into focus.

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