Strategy's STRC preferred stock has climbed 32.8% over 42 days, recovering from a low of $71 in late June to trade around $94.55, after Michael Saylor moved to actively defend the instrument by selling Bitcoin to fund its dividends and buy back shares. The rebound comes after a stretch where investors openly questioned whether the company could keep making payments on the preferred stock at all.
The pressure point was straightforward: STRC bottomed in late June just as Bitcoin itself dropped to around $58,000, raising doubts about whether Strategy's Bitcoin-backed balance sheet could keep supporting a preferred instrument paying a semi-monthly dividend. Those doubts have since eased. Strategy sold 1,638 Bitcoin for $104.7 million, using $52.4 million of the proceeds toward preferred-stock dividend payments and another $52.3 million to repurchase STRC shares directly, while lifting the company's dollar reserve to $4 billion in the process.
Saylor's math for why this works
Saylor has laid out the reasoning behind the strategy in increasingly specific terms. He has argued that issuing STRC at a rate equal to just 2.3% of Strategy's total Bitcoin holdings turns the company into a permanent net buyer of BTC — even when Bitcoin sales fund dividend payments, the capital raised from issuing new preferred shares more than offsets what's sold, as long as Bitcoin itself appreciates at least 2.3% annually. For the company's newest preferred stock specifically, Saylor has said Bitcoin only needs to compound at an annualized 3.3% for capital gains on Strategy's holdings to fund STRC dividends indefinitely.
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Selling below cost to defend the trade
Notably, some of Strategy's recent Bitcoin sales have come below the company's own cost basis — an unusual move for a firm whose entire public identity is built around never selling Bitcoin. That willingness to take a realized loss on BTC specifically to protect STRC's dividend track record signals how central the preferred-stock program has become to Strategy's financing model, arguably as important now as the Bitcoin accumulation strategy that made the company famous.
What the recovery signals
STRC's current dividend rate sits at 12.00% as of July 2026, a yield high enough to draw income-focused investors regardless of what happens to Bitcoin's price day to day — provided the market believes Strategy can keep paying it. The stock's climb back to $94.55 suggests that confidence is returning, though it remains directly tied to Bitcoin's own trajectory: Saylor's entire framework depends on BTC continuing to appreciate at a modest but consistent pace, a bet that has yet to be tested through a genuinely prolonged downturn.
