Strategy's STRC Plunge Hits 25% Discount as Bitcoin Correlation Climbs to Record High 📉

Strategy Inc.'s perpetual preferred stock STRC slid to $75 on Thursday, trading at a 25% discount to its intended $100 par value, as bitcoin's drop toward $59,000 pulled the instrument's 90-day correlation with BTC to nearly 0.70, the highest level since STRC's July 2025 debut, according to TradingView data. STRC has lost 23% this month, while bitcoin has fallen nearly 20% to under $60,000, levels last seen in October 2024. Common shares MSTR dropped 8% to $86 on Thursday, their lowest since February 2024, with the company's enterprise multiple to net asset value compressing to 1.05. CoinGlass data shows more than $1.44 billion in positions liquidated across the crypto market over the past 24 hours, dominated by $1.2 billion in longs, with bitcoin accounting for $658 million of that total.

The slide has invited fresh comparisons on social media to Terra's UST, the algorithmic stablecoin whose collapse erased about $40 billion in 2022. Benchmark-StoneX analyst Mark Palmer pushed back on that framing in a Monday note. "STRC is not a stablecoin," Palmer wrote, arguing that a stablecoin promises to hold a fixed $1 value while STRC is a preferred stock engineered to trade near $100 with no peg to defend. "Strategy's objective has been to support STRC's trading at a level near $100, not to guarantee it," Palmer said. "What has happened with STRC is best described not as a depeg — something that was never pegged cannot be depegged — but as a market-driven reset of required yield." UST held its dollar value through a mint-and-burn loop with sister token LUNA, a self-reinforcing mechanism STRC does not have. STRC also pays an 11.5% annual dividend, a yield that has echoed the 20% return Terra's Anchor protocol advertised before its implosion.

STRC is backed indirectly by Strategy's bitcoin holdings, which the company said Monday now total 847,363 coins worth about $54.5 billion, though BitcoinTreasuries.net currently values the stash at $50.4 billion. The product functions as a funding engine: when STRC trades at or above $100, Strategy can issue additional shares through at-the-market offerings and use the proceeds to buy more bitcoin. That mechanism is now paused, with STRC trading well below par limiting the firm's ability to raise additional capital for BTC purchases. Strategy has made small BTC sales recently to cover dividend obligations, a shift from its long-standing "never sell" stance.

Despite the price action, Strategy retains the U.S. dollar reserves to comfortably meet STRC's dividend obligations for almost 10 months, and the current price does not put those payments at risk. STRC trading below its $100 target simply makes the funding engine less efficient, because the company can no longer issue preferred shares on attractive terms. Two Prime CEO Alexander Blume told CoinDesk on Thursday that the bigger concern is credibility rather than solvency. Michael Saylor's repeated pivots and deviations from his stated plans have shattered investor trust, Blume said, and trust may be what keeps STRC from returning to its $100 par value.