Strategy STRC reclaims $100 par, opening door for fresh Saylor bitcoin buys

Strategy STRC reclaimed its $100 par value on Friday, ending a fortnight in which Michael Saylor’s bitcoin treasury company stayed out of the market and clearing the way for the weekly purchase pattern to resume as early as 11 May.

The Tysons Corner-based firm watched STRC close at $99.99 in regular trading and print at $100 after hours, snapping back from a slide that had pulled the security to discount levels through late April. Volume on the day ran to $218 million. Roughly 80 per cent of the float, worth about $4 billion, sits with retail accounts attracted by the 11.5 per cent annual dividend.

The premium-to-par mechanic matters because STRC is now Strategy’s primary funding vehicle for bitcoin accumulation. Sales through the at-the-market programme dry up when the stock trades below $100, since the company avoids issuing dilutive paper at a discount. Since March, STRC has raised about $1.5 billion at par, and the security has scaled to a market value near $5 billion, with $5.6 billion of year-to-date gross proceeds across the programme, according to company filings.

Saylor’s last bitcoin purchase came on 27 April, when Strategy added 3,273 BTC for $255 million, taking the total treasury to 818,334 coins. At the company’s first-quarter earnings release on 5 May, executive chairman Saylor flagged that the streak of near-weekly buys would pause because the funding window was shut. With STRC back at par on Friday and bitcoin printing at $80,646 in late New York trade, the pause looks set to end.

What the print showed

The treasury sits on a cost basis of $75,532 per coin, leaving $64.44 billion of bitcoin on the books and an unrealised gain of 4.23 per cent. Chief executive Phong Le told analysts on the post-earnings call that Q1 saw the company acquire 89,600 BTC for $5.5 billion, the second-largest quarterly tally in the firm’s history despite a roughly 20 per cent drawdown in the spot price during the period.

Roughly 77,000 of those Q1 coins were funded out of STRC, according to JPMorgan’s tracking of the programme. The bank flagged a path to as much as $30 billion in 2026 bitcoin spend if STRC continues to absorb retail capital at the current pace. STRC has scaled to $8.5 billion in market cap in nine months, making it the largest preferred stock by market value globally and pushing daily turnover in the security to roughly $375 million on average.

The retail concentration in the float carries both ways. Cheap distribution into individual brokerage accounts means Saylor does not have to clear an institutional underwriter on every issuance window. It also means a sentiment shift on bitcoin can move STRC’s price faster than a more institutionally-held preferred would, which is what the late-April drift demonstrated.

How the funding mechanic works

STRC sits senior to common shares (MSTR) but pays a fixed yield, with the company maintaining the at-the-market issuance window when the security trades at or above par. Below par, new issuance dilutes existing holders by selling discounted claims on the same underlying bitcoin pool. Holding the price at $100 is therefore the lever Saylor pulls to keep buying.

The 11.5 per cent yield has so far been enough to clear the supply that comes with each new tranche. The trade-off is exposed, though: a sustained move in bitcoin below the cost basis would tighten the dividend coverage and pressure STRC’s market price, looping back to choke off purchase capacity. Critics of the structure flag this refinancing risk as the fragility in the model.

That fragility looked less hypothetical in late April. STRC drifted to a discount as bitcoin printed below $80,000, briefly turning the company into a price-taker in its own funding stack. Friday’s reclaim of par hands the operating playbook back to Saylor.

What’s next

The next ex-dividend date for STRC falls on 15 May, with the regular distribution following. Strategy has historically announced new bitcoin purchases on Mondays in filings to the SEC, making 11 May the first date the resumed accumulation could land in print. A purchase, even a token one, would confirm the funding gate has reopened.

Bitcoin’s recent slide back toward the $80,000 mark has thinned out the bid in the spot ETF complex, with the segment seeing $277.5 million of net redemptions in the most recent session. A return of Strategy as the largest non-ETF buyer would partially offset that drag, particularly given the company’s stated intent to push toward 1 million coins held over time.

Other listed firms have moved smaller sums in the same direction. Coinbase added $88 million of bitcoin in the first quarter, lifting its own treasury to 16,492 BTC, while Strategy’s holdings dwarf the rest of the corporate cohort by an order of magnitude.

For Saylor, the path to the 1-million target now runs through STRC’s price discipline rather than the equity market alone. Friday’s close, with the security back at par and the dividend clock about to reset, is the trigger to start buying again.