Just three weeks after hitting its intraday high of $197 and closing price high of $195.94 on May 11, Michael Saylor’s Strategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) stock suffered a steep crash that took it to $136.62: 30.65% and 30.27% below the two 2026 records, respectively.
The collapse came shortly after the company sold 32 Bitcoins (BTC) to help fund its preferred equity commitments. While the trade was trivial in scale, amounting to just $2.5 million and less than 0.01% of the total cryptocurrency treasury, investors appear to have taken it as a stark warning.
Indeed, Strategy built a reputation for hoarding BTC, with much of its image being shaped by Michael Saylor’s flamboyant, meme-infused, and highly dramatic X posts and a rhetoric indicating one can never own too much of the digital asset.
Beyond affecting MSTR stock price, the sale also either triggered or contributed to a major Bitcoin crash, and the world’s premier cryptocurrency is 11.42% down in the last week and changing hands at $67,153 at press time on June 3.
Did Michael Saylor trigger the latest Bitcoin price crash?
Still, it remains somewhat unclear at press time if Saylor’s trade was the trigger or merely came during a wider risk-off moment in the digital assets market.
So far in 2026, cryptocurrencies have been far more sensitive to geopolitical pressures than the American stock market, and last week featured a significant escalation in the conflict between the U.S. and Iran.
Specifically, shortly after Axios issued the latest of its many reports about an ‘imminent’ deal between the warring nations, negotiations suffered additional setbacks and missiles and bombs started flying at a heightened rate.
Under the circumstances and with Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) also warning that the effects of the closing of the Strait of Hormuz cannot be staved off for much longer, it is plausible that Bitcoin’s most recent price correction is a harbinger of a wider incoming sell-off.
Crypto market wiped $170 billion in a week
Whatever the underlying cause and the next move, Bitcoin’s dominant position ensured widespread contagion in the cryptocurrency market.
Between May 28 and June 3, 2026, the overall market capitalization of digital assets crashed by $170 billion, with the bulk of the collapse taking place in June.
Still, the downturn has not been universal, and nearly half of the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies managed to rally in the last week of trading. For example, Stellar (XLM) is up 54% within the timeframe, and the increasingly popular Hyperliquid (HYPE) rose 16%.
Featured image via Shutterstock
