The strategy Bitcoin bet posted losses on paper for the first time in years as the digital asset fell below the average purchase price of the Bitcoin buying firm on Sunday.

With Bitcoin recently changing hands at $78,579, strategyThe $56 billion position had turned positive again on Monday. The company has accumulated its deposit at an average cost of about $76,000 per Bitcoin since 2020, according to a press release.

Shares in Strategy clawed back some losses as U.S. markets opened, but remained down nearly 2 percent from Friday’s close at just under $147, according to Yahoo Finance. Over the past six months, the company’s share price has fallen 60%, outpacing Bitcoin’s 30% drop.

Bitcoin fell to $74,591 on Sunday, its lowest level since President Donald Trump was re-elected on a pro-crypto platform in the US 14 months ago. Strategy’s share price rose to $543 in the following weeks, but has since fallen 74%.

The last time Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings showed losses, the firm had about $5.3 billion of the digital asset in October 2023. At the time, the firm had bought Bitcoin at an average price of $30,252 per Bitcoin. The company has since spent $49 billion on Bitcoin, taking on convertible debt and issuing dividend-paying common stock and preferred stock.

In the press release, Strategy noted that it had purchased approximately 900 Bitcoins over the past week at an average cost of about $88,000 per Bitcoin. The increase in its holdings was financed by issuing ordinary shares, without Strategy selling any preferred shares to investors.

As Strategy sold its variable-rate preferred shares, or STRCs, to investors earlier this month, it had consecutive weeks in which it bought more than $1 billion worth of Bitcoin. However, the company’s latest acquisition is its smallest purchase since early December.

On Saturday, Strategy co-founder and executive chairman Michael Saylor told X that the company was raising STRC’s dividend rate by 25 basis points to 11.25%. This means it will cost more for Strategy to raise money to buy Bitcoin with the product moving forward.

Last year, Strategy set up a reserve called USD to effectively pay dividends and your website it says that the cash stock can currently hold 30 months of payments. Strategy recently raised $31 million more than it spent on Bitcoin, leaving it with more cash on hand.

When STRC trades above $100, the company has said it will issue more product to keep its price in line with the threshold. On Monday, the price of the preferred stock rose to $99.17, after falling to $97.95 last week, it said. Yahoo Finance.

At Myriad, a prediction market owned by decipherDastan’s parent company, traders pencil inside 31% chance on Monday that Strategy will sell Bitcoin this year. This represented a notable increase from a 22% probability the previous week.

The Justice Department released 3 million pages of files on Jeffrey Epstein last week, and Saylor was among those named in an email sent by publicist Peggy Siegal to the late sex offender, two years after Epstein was convicted of sex crimes in 2008.

Siegal recalled a gala dinner for a group of independent filmmakers that took place in 2010, where Saylor allegedly contributed $25,000 to pay for the food “and the opportunity to put her name to (the) invite and meet a fashion group.”

He went on to describe Saylor as “a complete idiot” with “no personality” whose behavior was comparable to a “zombie on drugs”.

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“We had smart directors sitting next to him and his gorgeous idiot date, and we couldn’t get any conversation out of him except, ‘I’ve got a yacht I’m taking to Cannes,'” he continued.

Siegal wrote that Saylor discouraged her so much that she eventually “ran away from him,” arguing that the disconnect was too much for her to “take his money and provide a better life because he has no sense for social behavior.”

decipher Siegal and Strategy have been contacted for comment.