STRC is Strategy’s variable-rate perpetual preferred — dividends in cash, a stated design goal of trading around $100 par, and a rate the board adjusts monthly to encourage it. Today it trades below par, and that cuts two ways: the same $12 coupon on a sub-$100 price is a higher effective yield — and a mechanism built to hold the price at par that isn’t holding it is telling you the market is pricing a risk. This page shows both readings but recommends neither. For where STRC sits among bitcoin-backed income instruments, see Bitcoin and Fixed Income, the parent page.
Price, effective yield and coverage ratios recompute live from bitcoin spot on each load; the dated constants below each carry an as of — badge.
Last close, adjustable in the lens below.
The stated annual rate on $100 par, paid semi-monthly.
The below-par arithmetic
Every figure here is computed live from the price. The discount is a number; so is what closing it would be worth, and so is the case where it never closes.
Coupon ÷ price, against the coupon at par.
How many months of coupon the gap to par is worth.
—
—
The below-par lens
—If — or when — STRC returns to par, the annualized return is the coupon plus the pull to par. Drag to choose how fast; the speed is your assumption, and the arithmetic is its consequence. Nothing here predicts a return to par.
—
Estimated annualized return at every return-to-par horizon. The amber line is STRC’s implied return under the chosen dividend scenario; overlays are opt-in. The curve flattens toward the effective yield as the horizon lengthens — the further out the return is pushed, the less the pull-to-par adds. An assumption, not a forecast.
More: demanded-yield ↔ price converter
Price is simply the annual coupon divided by the yield the market demands. Set either side; the other follows. No scenario is endorsed — this is pure arithmetic that spans every camp’s.
—
The levers the issuer holds against a below-par price
A peg that isn’t pinning is information; a below-par preferred with a determined issuer is a measurable contest between the market’s demanded yield and the issuer’s balance sheet. The board below shows the issuer’s side, live — four levers, each a status readout with its full log and mechanics on demand. Bitcoin’s path sets the other side.
Full log & mechanics
The brackets are management policy — non-binding, modifiable or abandonable at any time without shareholder consent. Rate-setting is board sole discretion; dividends are payable only when declared.
Downside guardrails (the asymmetry) Max monthly cut is 25 bps plus any intra-month 1-month SOFR decline; the absolute floor is 1-month term SOFR; and cuts are legally barred while any cumulative dividends remain unpaid. Rate rises, by contrast, are unlimited and discretionary.
Full log & mechanics
The same fact, both camps No new STRC issued below $100 is stated discipline (the company’s framing) and economic necessity: below par, primary at-the-market issuance is uneconomic and the accumulation flywheel halts on its own (the Cipolaro / NYDIG reading).
Full log & mechanics
Retiring a $100-par share below par extinguishes a perpetual 12% obligation at a discount. What that costs and who pays for it is worked out in the cost accounting below — both readings.
How many times over the treasury covers what’s owed — three ways of counting.
The popular “dashboard” metric — treats STRC as the sole liability.
Net assets after senior claims ÷ STRC notional.
Total liquid assets ÷ all claims senior-and-including STRC.
The popular metric omits the senior claims that sit ahead of STRC. The three numbers answer three different questions; the page shows all three. Which one to watch for which risk is in the cost accounting.
Full log & constants
Why not simply own bitcoin? And why not simply hold Treasuries?
STRC sits between two things a holder could otherwise own outright — bitcoin on one shore, a Treasury on the other. Each shore has its question. If the case for STRC is “wait for bitcoin to recover and the price returns to par,” then the below-par bull case and the bitcoin bull case are the same bet with different payoff shapes — so why not own bitcoin? And if the case is a steady cash yield, a Treasury already pays one without the issuer or bitcoin risk — so why STRC? The table answers both, cell by cell. The bitcoin column is the live arithmetic from Discount, or Premium?; the Treasury column reuses the parent page’s 10-year yield.
| Bitcoin below trend | STRC below par | 10-year Treasury |
|---|
Every cell that can be computed is computed from the model at current spot, not asserted. This directly interrogates the “unique third position” framing (Krueger) credited on the parent page — steelmanned, then examined.
The instrument invites one tactical read worth naming plainly: a holder rebalancing out of bitcoin might treat STRC as a yield-bearing waiting room instead of cash. The record’s complication is that the discount widened in the same weather the waiting room would be used for — the yield earned and the mark-to-market taken arrive correlated, not independent. The page names that; it does not tell you what to do with it.
What each lever costs, and who pays
The events live as log rows on the board above. This section carries only the evergreen cost arithmetic of each lever — computed, dated, never narrated.
—
—
Each failure mode has a figure on the board that would show it happening — so you can watch the number rather than be told a story. Each breakeven is the bitcoin price below which the treasury no longer covers everything owed at-or-above STRC, on that basis:
A breach of that line is a condition, not an event — no covenant forces sales; what would matter is how long coverage stays impaired while dividends draw the reserve (~25 months at current rates).
These replace the parent page’s older $33K / $21K thresholds, which predate the recent bitcoin sales and current holdings — recomputed here, not inherited. The full failure taxonomy (bitcoin winter, at-the-market closure, coverage erosion, rate spiral) lives on the parent’s Risks tab.
STRC dividends are non-mandatory — payable only when, as, and if declared — so full suspension is contractually available at any time. Because STRC is preferred equity, unpaid cumulative dividends accrue without triggering default or bankruptcy (BitMEX Research’s “built to bend, not break,” credited). Pulling it has a priced structure: arrears accrue as a growing claim, rate cuts become legally barred while any arrears remain unpaid, and the framework’s own capital engine depends on preferred markets staying open to the issuer. Against that, roughly 25 months of reserve at current rates makes it unnecessary today. During the June de-anchoring, suspension was openly debated in market coverage — raise, hold, or suspend were all treated as live possibilities. The Suspended toggle in the lens above shows what that case does to the arithmetic.
Price against par, since issuance
The lens, run over the instrument’s whole history. What it shows: the peg held for months, then broke with bitcoin’s drawdown — par is a magnet in calm and an aspiration in stress, on the evidence so far.
A schematic of shape, not tick data — anchored to the known points (issuance near par, the all-time high, the all-time low, and today) and annotated with the rate changes and issuer actions along the way.
The record is short — about one year. That is itself a risk disclosure, not a footnote: there is not yet enough history to know how STRC behaves across a full bitcoin cycle, and the floor that has held so far is evidence, not law. No instrument like this has existed before, and the entire record is one bitcoin drawdown — how STRC trades through a bull leg is unobserved, and cycles between discount and premium are plausible and untested.
- Educational, not advice. This page is for education and information only; nothing here is investment advice or a recommendation to buy, hold, or sell STRC or any security. It is single-security commentary and sits closest to the advice line of anything on this site — read it as an examination, not a signal. Bitcoin and bitcoin-linked instruments carry significant risk, including total loss. Consult a qualified, licensed advisor before acting.
- No position, no compensation. Last Coin Standing holds no position in STRC, MSTR, or any Strategy security, and receives nothing from any issuer, for this page or otherwise.
- A live episode. This page examines a live episode and will be revised — or retired to a post-mortem — as it resolves.
- The figures. STRC price, the effective yield, and the three coverage ratios are computed live from bitcoin spot (CoinGecko, falling back to the latest monthly sample — labelled honestly whenever the live fetch does not resolve). The dated constants — par, rate, shares outstanding, the claim stack, holdings, reserve, and the logs — are drawn from Strategy’s 8-K filings as of the badged date and refreshed on the monthly checklist. Any figure that could not be independently reconciled at build carries a visible verify badge rather than being presented as settled.
- Assumptions, not predictions. The return-to-par arithmetic, the dividend scenarios, and the overlays are consequences of assumptions you choose. There are no buy zones, no verdicts, and no price targets on this page by design.
- Credits. Power-law overlay coefficients: Mežinskis / Porkopolis Economics, via The Channel. The daily-accrual framing is credited to Walton; the total-addressable-market “middle seat” argument to Krueger. The durability and fragility cases summarized around the board draw on the named analyst roster in the design ledger — among them Kendrick (Standard Chartered), BitMEX Research, Palmer (Benchmark), Cole & Walton (Strive) on one side; Schiff, Adrangi (Kerrisdale), Cipolaro (NYDIG), and others on the other. Arguments are credited where they appear; no scenario is endorsed.