Strategy has found a new gear in its Bitcoin accumulation engine, and the share of STRC preferred stock that powers it is increasing.
The company, formerly known as MicroStrategy, held 738,731 BTC as of March 8, up from 672,500 at the end of 2025. This represents an increase of 66,231 coins in 68 days and has already exceeded the net purchase amount for the full year of 2021, 2022, or 2023.
The pace of these acquisitions is impressive no matter how you look at it, and what will be different in 2026 is where the money is coming from.
Over the years, Strategy has primarily relied on common stock, MSTRs, and convertible debt to finance its Bitcoin purchases.
MSTR stock typically trades at a premium to its net asset value, allowing the company to raise capital on favorable terms, effectively monetizing investor enthusiasm for leveraged Bitcoin exposure.
However, its Bitcoin holding premium (mNAV) has compressed significantly over the past year to 1.20, far from its previous high.
How STRC became a core funding rail
Because mNAV is less generous, the company led by Michael Saylor has adopted a new product called STRC. This is a perpetual preferred stock that pays an 11.50% annual dividend and is designed to trade at a par value of nearly $100.
This allows Strategy to create a more continuous funding system that can reach different investor bases and operate at different times of the trading day.
For context, during the week ended March 8, Strategy sold 3.78 million shares of STRC stock for approximately $377.1 million in net proceeds. Notably, this week was the best performing week for STRC stock sales since its inception last July.
This means that STRC accounted for approximately one-third of this week’s $1.28 billion market raise, a proportion large enough to indicate that preferred stock has moved from an ancillary vehicle to a core part of the capital stack.
What made this especially significant was that the funding came during a week when Bitcoin was struggling amid rising geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.
Moreover, data from STRC.live suggests that this trend continues strongly, with March 9 alone setting a record for STRC issuance, with proceeds estimated to fund purchases of approximately 1,420 BTC. Since its launch, STRC has funded 33,976 BTC worth over $3.5 billion.
These impressive numbers show that STRC is attracting significant attention from investors looking for yield.
For context, Jeff Walton, chief risk officer at asset management firm Strive, noted that STRC generates more volume and yield than JPMorgan Perpetual Preferred (JPM-PD).
He said JPMorgan’s product had an effective yield of about 5.8% and generated about $2 million in daily volume, while STRC had an effective yield of 11.50% and generated about $213.5 million in daily volume.
He added:
“STRC (sic) trades 106 times more than $JPM-PD. Digital credits (sic) will consume the world.”
Unsurprisingly, this strong performance has attracted bidding from a number of institutional investors, with preferred stock and income-oriented funds such as BlackRock iShares Preferred & Income Securities ETF (PFF) and Fidelity Capital & Income Fund (FAGIX) emerging among STRC holders.
At the same time, Prevalon Energy and Anchorage Digital recently revealed that they had allocated a portion of their finances to STRC.
Given these strong demand levels, Strategy is ramping up its efforts to accelerate the market availability of STRC.
On March 9, the Bitcoin-focused firm amended its omnibus distribution agreement to allow multiple agents to sell the same type of securities in a single day. This includes during pre-market and after-hours sessions while maintaining the ability to conduct bulk sales after 4:00 PM ET.
For companies whose entire corporate strategy is to convert investor demand into Bitcoin as quickly as possible, being able to operate more hours of the trading day with multiple execution paths is a real throughput boost.
The operating logic is simple. The preferred issue provides Strategy with an additional distribution vehicle when demand for its common stock is weak, volatile, or concentrated over a narrow period of time.
The modified sales agreement therefore adds flexibility in timing and execution, which could be important for strategies built around converting investor demand into repeat Bitcoin purchases.
Cost of running the machine continuously
On the other hand, the yield that makes STRC attractive to income investors comes at the expense of strategy continuity.
Since STRC’s notional principal balance is approximately $3.84 billion, an annual dividend of 11.50% means a cash liability of approximately $442 million per year, or approximately $36.8 million per month.
This means that Strategy is paying a significant premium for its ability to continually purchase Bitcoin in different market conditions and from a wider variety of investors.
The company’s critics have pointed this out, with longtime Bitcoin skeptic Peter Schiff claiming that Strategy is burning ever-increasing amounts of cash to maintain the pace of accumulation.
He added that Saylor will ultimately face the choice of suspending the preferred dividend or selling Bitcoin to cover the payments.
At the same time, prominent short seller James Chanos, who holds a short position in MSTR, took issue with the company’s framing of STRC as a “digital credit.”
Notably, Strategy describes its preferred securities as Bitcoin-backed, high-yield financial instruments aimed at turning BTC reserves into a permanent capital engine.
However, Chanos rejected that framework, saying:
“They are literally credit products denominated in fiat currency. Anything digital is an asset, not a liability or a preference.”
The tension between these two views captures the central debate surrounding Strategy’s model.
In a constructive market where Bitcoin is rising and priority demand remains strong, the company continues to accumulate coins at an accelerated pace while keeping fixed costs manageable relative to asset returns.
In a bear market, where Bitcoin falls and funding availability tightens, strategies may need to offer higher yields, as they currently do, to attract preferred buyers. This can lead to a heavy cost structure relative to the value of what you are purchasing.
MSTR resiliency supports model
Despite these concerns, market traders appear to have absorbed the trade-off with relative calm.
According to data from Strategy Tracker, MSTR is down about 8.3% since the beginning of the year, while Bitcoin itself is down about 20%. This relative outperformance has substantive significance for Strategy’s ability to raise capital.
This is because if the common stock premium shrinks, the attractiveness of issuing MSTR shares will decrease and the burden on preferred issuance will increase.
Meanwhile, Strategy still has significant ATM capacity remaining across its holdings, suggesting that management is prepared to aggressively deploy ATMs in the first two months of 2026.
Nevertheless, whether the preferred stock model can maintain its current pace will largely depend on where Bitcoin trades going forward and whether income investors continue to find yields attractive at current levels.
