For two years, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) has been the biggest institutional Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) holder. IBIT launched in January 2024, pulled in tens of billions in ETF inflows, and passed every corporate treasury by Q2 2024.
However, Bitcoin’s nearly 40% drop in value from its October 2025 peak made most institutions pull back, with IBIT flows cooling to a trickle. But one company has kept buying Bitcoin through the downtrend—and on April 20, it became the largest institutional holder.
Strategy, the Michael Saylor–led firm formerly known as MicroStrategy, disclosed a $2.54 billion Bitcoin purchase that pushed its holdings past IBIT’s for the first time since mid-2024. It makes Strategy the world’s largest institutional Bitcoin holder and the first corporate treasury to ever be above a flagship Bitcoin ETF.
The $2.54 Billion Bitcoin Buy That Put Strategy Ahead of BlackRock
Michael Saylor has a habit of telegraphing big Bitcoin buys before they’re filed. On April 19, he posted “Think Even Bigger” on X alongside a screenshot of Strategy’s portfolio tracker. The next morning, the SEC filing happened: Strategy had bought 34,164 BTC between April 13 and April 19 for $2.54 billion, at an average price of $74,395 per coin.
That’s the third-largest Bitcoin buy Strategy has ever made, and its biggest weekly purchase since November 2024. It brings total holdings to 815,061 BTC at a combined cost of $61.56 billion, which puts Strategy’s ownership of all the Bitcoin in circulation close to 4%.
So that’s when Strategy crossed over BlackRock. As of April 17, IBIT held 802,823 BTC, but Strategy’s buy pushed it roughly 12,000 BTC ahead, flipping a lead IBIT has held since Q2 2024. For a fund that became the fastest ETF in history to reach $70 billion in assets, getting overtaken by a single corporate treasury is a serious symbolic hit.
How Strategy Closed the 58,000 BTC Gap on BlackRock
In early February, IBIT was still ahead of Strategy by nearly 60,000 BTC. The gap closed because Strategy added roughly 80,000 Bitcoin in the first four months of 2026—a pace no other Bitcoin ETF even came close to matching. IBIT pulled in about $8.4 billion in net Q1 inflows, enough to add roughly 23,000 BTC to its holdings. Strategy bought more than three times that.
The difference came down to STRC, a perpetual preferred stock Strategy issued in late 2025. STRC pays an 11.5% dividend and trades near $100 a share, giving Strategy a steady source of capital that doesn’t dilute regular MSTR shareholders. Every time the stock trades back to $100, Saylor can issue more shares on the open market and funnel the cash straight into Bitcoin. The $2.54 billion that pushed Strategy past IBIT came almost entirely from that playbook—$2.18 billion from STRC sales and $366 million from MSTR common stock.
BlackRock itself has been helping finance this. The asset manager holds a big stake in MSTR through its own funds, so some of the capital that would have gone into IBIT has ended up in Strategy instead. In effect, BlackRock has been bankrolling the company that just took its Bitcoin title—and how fast STRC can keep raising capital will decide how far ahead of IBIT Strategy ends up.
What Strategy’s Lead Means for Bitcoin’s Institutional Landscape
IBIT and Strategy represent completely different kinds of Bitcoin demand. IBIT moves when investors put money in or pull it out—it’s a passive fund with no conviction of its own. Strategy moves when Saylor decides to move. Nic Puckrin, co-founder of Coin Bureau, put it simply: Saylor now has the power to swing Bitcoin’s price just by pausing purchases.
And that buying is increasingly coming from one place. Strategy holds roughly 76% of all Bitcoin owned by public companies right now, a share that has climbed sharply as other firms stopped buying during Bitcoin’s six-month slide. In the past 30 days, every treasury outside Strategy bought just 1,000 BTC combined. Strategy bought 45,000. The corporate Bitcoin trade has narrowed to one company.
Saylor has said he wants Strategy to own 1 million BTC by the end of 2026—a target that would need roughly $540 million in fresh STRC sales per week to pull off. Strategy is now less than 200,000 BTC from that finish line, and hitting it would put the company at close to 5% of all Bitcoin ever mined.
Should Bitcoin Investors Care That Strategy Now Leads BlackRock?
The flip is good for Bitcoin demand right now, but the same concentration behind it carries a real downside risk. Strategy’s own investor presentation confirmed the company will begin selling Bitcoin if its market-cap-to-NAV ratio falls below 1.0—the level where MSTR stock trades below the value of the Bitcoin it holds. That ratio just recovered to 1.0 after spending weeks below it, and traders on Myriad have the odds of Strategy selling Bitcoin this year at 13%, down from 30% in February.
So the bigger thing to watch is whether MSTR can stay above its NAV through the rest of 2026. If Bitcoin holds up and Saylor can keep raising capital, the buying continues. However, a sharp enough drop could pull MSTR below its NAV and force Strategy to consider selling to meet its dividend obligations—which would turn the market’s biggest buyer into a seller during a downturn. The flip is bullish for Bitcoin today, but the same setup that made it possible is now the biggest risk in the market.
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