Funding stock buybacks by selling your primary reserve asset is a dangerous game, but Lite Strategy just pulled it off without using a dime of debt

Lite Strategy, a Nasdaq-listed company that holds Litecoin as its primary reserve asset, spent about $5.4 million repurchasing roughly 4.9 million shares through July 17. The company funded the purchases with an undisclosed mix of LTC sales and covered-call premiums.The transaction shrank Lite Strategy's reported Litecoin holdings but appears to have lifted LTC backing per outstanding common share by about 1.7%.In a July 30 filing, the company said it paid an average of $1.11 and retired about 13% of the shares outstanding when the program began, without using debt. It reported 819,070 LTC and 31,882,648 outstanding common shares as of July 17.Lite Strategy reported 929,548 LTC at Dec. 31, after the buyback had begun. Adding the rounded 4.9 million repurchases to the July count produces an implied starting share count of about 36.78 million, assuming no offsetting changes in common shares.That proxy rises from roughly 0.02527 LTC to 0.02569 LTC per outstanding common share, an increase of about 0.00042 LTC, or 1.66%. The estimate combines a Dec. 31 treasury snapshot with a reconstructed share count based on a rounded repurchase total.The arithmetic hinges on a small gap between two...