Key Takeaways
- Lumida CEO Ram Ahluwalia said Strategy’s $216M sale flipped the firm into bitcoin’s marginal seller.
- Cryptoquant’s Ki Young Ju mocked Saylor’s 2025 kidney quote, posting “buy your kidney back” yesterday.
- Strategy still holds 843,775 BTC, and its monetization program allows up to $1.25 billion in sales.
The Kidney Quote Comes Back Around
For years, Michael Saylor’s maxim was the loudest “never sell” signal in crypto. In a February 2025 post on X, as bitcoin slid below $85,000, the Strategy Inc. (Nasdaq: MSTR) executive chairman told followers:
“Sell a kidney if you must, but keep the Bitcoin.”
That line is now being quoted back at him with Ram Ahluwalia, CEO of investment adviser Lumida Wealth, adding: “Michael Saylor said … sell your kidney … but don’t sell your Bitcoin. He’s selling the Bitcoin.”
Ahluwalia argued that Strategy has flipped from being bitcoin’s marginal buyer to its marginal seller and that the reversal is creating a hangover across the crypto market. Ki Young Ju, founder and CEO of blockchain analytics firm Cryptoquant, piled on with a post of his own: “Now sell the Bitcoin and buy your kidney back.”
The jibes follow Strategy’s disclosure that it sold 3,588 bitcoin for roughly $216 million between June 29 and July 5 to fund dividends on its preferred securities and rebuild its dollar reserves to $2.55 billion.
Saylor had already broken from his “never sell” stance in May, when he acknowledged on an earnings call that the company would probably sell some bitcoin to cover its obligations. After days of being mum, Saylor broke his silence on the sale with a defense of the company’s long-term thesis.
The concept Ahluwalia invoked matters for price. The marginal buyer is the participant whose steady demand sets the price at the edge of the market. Strategy bought billions of dollars of bitcoin through 2024 and 2025, absorbing supply week after week. When that bid becomes a source of new supply instead, the marginal price-setter changes and, in Ahluwalia’s telling, the whole market feels the withdrawal.
The numbers give the argument weight as Strategy remains the largest corporate holder with 843,775 BTC, more than 4% of the 21 million coins that will ever exist, acquired at an average cost of $74,476. Its new bitcoin monetization program permits up to $1.25 billion in sales for reserves, dividends or buybacks, meaning last week’s disposal may not be the last.
Hangover or Healthy Reset?
Bitcoin dropped to a Monday low of $61,246 after the disclosure but swiftly rebounded above $64,000 in the hours after. Moreover, not every institutional observer has read the sale as bearish. Grayscale Research said the disposal boosted Strategy’s dollar reserves to cover about 17 months of dividend payments and noted that investors are responding positively, with the firm’s STRC preferred stock rebounding after the news.
That leaves two competing narratives around the same 3,588 coins. Ahluwalia sees a structural shift where the market’s biggest whale has changed sides (and prices must find a new equilibrium without its bid) while Grayscale sees risk management: a smaller sale today to prevent a catastrophic one tomorrow.
What happens next likely depends on whether Strategy sells again. The monetization program’s $1.25 billion ceiling gives the company room for disposals nearly six times larger than last week’s, while any return to accumulation would restore the bid that Ahluwalia says the market is missing. Until one of those happens, the kidney jokes are unlikely to stop.
