Stretch? Saylor's STRC Hits the Floor, ATM Goes on Pause 🚦

Strategy's Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock (STRC) dropped to a record low of $82.53 on Tuesday, trading as much as roughly 17% below its $100 par value, and has continued to slide this week, falling 2.6% to $87.45 on Thursday according to Yahoo Finance. STRC closed at $89 on Wednesday and was at $88 on June 18, its lowest level since the product launched in July 2025. The shares are designed to trade around $100 through monthly dividend adjustments, and the variable dividend is currently at an effective rate of 12.9% on the $87.45 print and 12.5% at $91.79, above the stated 11.5% target.

The drop has paused the at-the-market (ATM) share program Strategy uses to fund its Bitcoin purchases. When STRC trades above $100 par, the company issues new shares through ATM offerings and uses the proceeds to buy $BTC; with shares below par, that lever is currently inactive. The slide follows Strategy's first Bitcoin sale since it began accumulating in 2022, disclosed on June 1, in which it sold 32 coins for about $2.5 million in late May to cover STRC distributions. Strategy has since built a dedicated USD reserve of $1.1 billion to cover preferred dividends and debt.

Market participants pointed to the firm's ongoing Bitcoin acquisitions and broader capital structure concerns as drivers of the pressure. "The market would rather see [Strategy] not acquiring more BTC and rather keep the cash for dividend payments," Markus Thielen, CEO of 10x Research, told Cointelegraph. "It appears traders are seeing the latest BTC acquisition as an unsustainable path for STRC." Nick Ruck, director of LVRG Research, said "broader risk-off sentiment in crypto markets has weighed on investor appetite," adding that "persistent selling pressure and concerns over Strategy's expanding capital structure and ATM issuance appear to be testing that resilience in the near term." James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares, told Decrypt that "STRC's continued weakness appears to be driven less by Bitcoin itself and more by uncertainty around how Strategy intends to fund and manage its growing fixed obligations," noting that "a Bitcoin rebound improves the value of the assets supporting Strategy, but it does not automatically increase the cash available."

On Monday, Strategy said it acquired 1,587 Bitcoin for around $100 million last week, after purchasing 1,550 BTC, also for about $100 million, the week before, bringing its holdings to 846,842 Bitcoin. Strategy's common stock (MSTR) has also sold off, dropping 6.35% on Tuesday to $122.81 and falling about 5% on Wednesday to $116.52, down 67% over the past 12 months. Bitcoin has held around $64,000 to $65,000 this week.

STRC is also facing competition from Strive's perpetual variable-rate preferred shares (SATA), which are trading at $100 and offering an effective yield of about 13%. The STRC dividend rate has been held at 11.5% for four straight months, and Benchmark-StoneX analysts expect Strategy to raise the dividend at the start of July. "At its current price level, we see STRC as offering investors an attractive total return opportunity, pairing a high current yield with a built-in mechanism that works to pull the price back toward par," Benchmark-StoneX Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst Mark Palmer told Decrypt. Strategy holds about 846,842 bitcoin, roughly 4% of the supply that will ever exist, making it the largest corporate holder of the asset.