bitcoin surpassed $81,000 in Asian hours on Tuesday, according to market data from CoinDesk, up 6.7% for the week and taking advantage of the broader risk tape that has stocks printing records amid easing tensions with Iran and renewed AI optimism.
Other major cryptocurrencies caught the offer. Solana rose 3% to $87.35. Dogecoin added another 4% to $0.1158, extending its weekly gain to 14.5% as futures open interest sits at a year-high. XRP, BNB, and TRX all printed in green that day.
Ether is the laggard, down 0.3% over 24 hours despite maintaining a 3.9% weekly gain to $2,376. ETH ETF spot flows turned negative last week, ending a three-week inflow streak.
Wall Street gauges closed at record highs on Tuesday after President Donald Trump signaled progress toward a “final deal” with Iran and announced a pause in Operation Project Freedom for a short period. Brent crude fell 1.7% to around $108 a barrel. The dollar, which had been the safe haven of choice during the US-Israel war against Iran, weakened against all of its G-10 peers.
Asian stocks hit a record high on Wednesday morning, with the MSCI Asia Pacific Index advancing 1.8%. South Korea’s Kospi jumped more than 6% to a record, and Samsung Electronics rose 15% to reach a valuation of $1 trillion, the second Asian company to surpass that mark.
Strong gains from Advanced Micro Devices and Super Micro Computer added to AI trading momentum, with Nasdaq 100 futures rising 0.6%.
A key development came when Strategy CEO Michael Saylor said on the company’s first-quarter 2026 earnings call that it may sell a portion of its bitcoin holdings to fund dividend payments.
“We’ll probably sell some bitcoin to pay a dividend just to inoculate the market and send the message that we did it,” Saylor said.
The world’s largest corporate bitcoin holder, with 818,334 BTC at an average acquisition cost of $75,537, has not sold any of its positions before. The model has always been buy and hold.
Strategy posted a net loss of $12.54 billion in the first quarter as bitcoin’s decline from October’s high of $126,000 affected the company’s market valuation accounting. The company has about $1.5 billion in annual dividend obligations across preferred stock and outstanding debt, with about 18 months of dollar reserves to cover them at current run rates.
MSTR shares fell more than 4% in after-hours trading following the announcement and BTC briefly fell below $81,000 before recovering.
Saylor framed the move as a feature of the model and not a break from it.
“You buy bitcoins with credit, let them appreciate, and then sell bitcoins to pay the dividend.”
That’s a different phrase than every previous strategic quarter, where the manual was to issue more debt or equity to fund obligations instead of tapping into the BTC pile.
