Strategy STRC Breaks $100 Peg — Saylor Sells Bitcoin
Strategy's STRC preferred stock slid to $89, below its $100 peg, freezing its Bitcoin-buying engine and forcing the first BTC sale since 2022 as shorts circle.
The Peg Just Snapped
Strategy's variable-rate preferred stock STRC — the one Saylor nicknamed "Stretch" — closed at $89 on Wednesday and printed an intraday low near $87. That's 11% to 13% below the $100 par it's engineered to hold, and the deepest break since the instrument launched in July 2025.
This isn't cosmetic. STRC is the cash machine behind Strategy's Bitcoin stack. When it trades at or above $100, the company issues fresh shares and routes the proceeds into BTC. Drop below par and the issuance window slams shut — and with it the bid that has powered the accumulation.
The Unthinkable: A Seller
Worse, the STRC dividend still has to be paid. With no fresh capital coming in, Strategy disclosed on June 1 that it had sold Bitcoin for the first time since it began accumulating in 2022 — 32 BTC for roughly $2.5 million in late May, purely to cover the distribution. For a treasury built on a never-sell ethos, that's a line in the sand.
That's the opening the bears wanted. Options flow around MSTR and STRC has turned decisively negative, with puts trading at more than twice the volume of calls at times — some of it routed through the YieldMax Short MSTR ETF (WNTR), which shorts the stock outright. The short thesis is reflexive: a falling share price forces more Bitcoin sales, which drag the price lower still.
Dorman's Fix, Saylor's Rebuttal
Arca CIO Jeff Dorman has floated a way out — in essence restructuring the obligations before the forced-selling pressure compounds. Saylor isn't blinking: "the shorts are wrong," he said. One awkward footnote in the design: Saylor admitted he built STRC largely with AI, going "back and forth for hours" with the model.
The Trader's Read
For now, STRC is the chart that matters — more than MSTR itself. As long as it sits under par, the Bitcoin-buying machine is switched off, and that's a structural demand hole that bleeds into broader sentiment. A clean, sustained reclaim of $100 would be the first all-clear. Until then, the risk stays reflexive: the lower STRC goes, the harder it is not to sell.