Strategy (MSTR) Preferred Stock Has Financed 136,000 Bitcoin (BTC) Purchases in 20 Months

Update 22:19 UTC: The company kept the annual dividend rate at 13% for the period beginning Sept. 1 and set a $500 million repurchase authorization for SATA, which carries a variable rate.

Perpetual Preferreds Funded 136,000 BTC

The cash that keeps the largest corporate Bitcoin (BTC) buying machine running comes from a security most crypto investors never touch. Perpetual preferred stock has financed purchases of roughly 136,000 BTC in the 20 months since the instruments first sold, through Oct. 5, Fidelity Digital Assets research analyst Zack Wainwright wrote in a Tuesday report, a total equal to more than 0.5% of the cryptocurrency's maximum supply. Strategy (MicroStrategy) (MSTR), the largest corporate holder, dominates that channel with five classes of perpetual preferred stock outstanding, the first of which, STRK, debuted in February 2025. Strive (ASST) runs a smaller program through its SATA preferred, and both companies face the same two-sided constraint: they need fresh cash to buy coins, and they need investors still willing to buy the paper that delivers it. The structure explains why the buying program has lasted. Preferred shares sit between debt and common equity, pay regular dividends and carry no voting rights, which lets Bitcoin treasury desks raise money with no fixed maturity and reach fixed-income buyers from traditional finance who would not own the coin directly. Income investors are the audience: as StoneX senior equity research analyst Mark Palmer put it, perpetual preferreds “have brought Bitcoin (BTC) to income investors, a group that ETFs never reached.” Fidelity sizes the bitcoin-focused preferred market at roughly $12 billion, a sliver of the $150 trillion global fixed-income complex, and analysts expect it to complement the larger ETF market rather than compete with it. The catch is arithmetic: as preferred share counts grow, so do the dividend payments owed before another coin is bought.

Strive has set its own parallel constraints around the SATA preferred, according to a filing. The company kept the annual dividend rate at 13% for the period beginning Sept. 1 and set a $500 million repurchase authorization for SATA, which carries a variable rate. Any actual buybacks would shrink the share base owed dividends, but the cash spent on repurchases cannot be redirected toward bitcoin purchases in the same period. Two Prime chief executive Alex Blume has pointed to STRC's late-June slide into the $70 range as an example of how preferred pricing feeds back into funding conditions, arguing investors should track not only the proceeds raised through preferred issuance but the cash actually paid out in dividends and repurchases.

$193 Million of Buybacks Against 267 BTC

Strategy's latest weekly update shows that trade-off in numbers. The company spent $193 million repurchasing STRC, its variable-rate preferred that pays a dividend currently around 12%, while adding just 267 Bitcoin (BTC) to the treasury, according to CoinShares head of research James Butterfill. It also lifted its preferred-stock repurchase authorization to $3 billion. Buybacks cut future dividend costs, but as Butterfill puts it, they compete with bitcoin purchases for capital today. Strategy has already sold some bitcoin to fund preferred dividends, and its cash reserves are the buffer standing between those payouts and the accumulation target. STRC itself raised $7.5 billion during 2026 through late July, and its price behavior shows why the reflex matters: the security briefly dropped into the $70 range in late June before recovering to about $99.40, close to par. Palmer calls demand for perpetual preferreds reflexive, meaning continued preferred-funded buying depends on the securities trading at or near par; below that line, fresh issuance becomes harder to sell and repurchases take priority. The two demand channels behave differently at the margin. US spot bitcoin ETFs have taken in roughly $57 billion cumulatively and hold about $106 billion in assets; redemptions can reverse that demand but leave no continuing dividend commitment, while every preferred dollar raised creates a standing claim on future cash flow. Bitwise head of research Ryan Rasmussen still expects ETFs to remain the larger source over the long run, with preferred offerings acting as a second tailwind aimed at a different type of investor. COINOTAG data shows MSTR last at $144.49, down 1.43% over 24 hours within a $140.24 to $147.58 range, its strongest composite support at $143.18 scoring 99 out of 100, and the daily trend rated a downtrend.

In the live market, the tension has not yet turned into stress. COINOTAG data puts the Bitcoin (BTC) market cap at $1.62 trillion with the price at $80,458, down 1.14% over 24 hours, and the nearest support and resistance levels bracket it tightly: $79,534 below scores 72 out of 100, while resistance at $81,722 scores 84, backed by the 50-day average, R1 and the 0.236 Fibonacci. The strongest band sits further out, with support at $75,034 scored 81 and resistance at $84,208 scored 88. Perpetual funding of 0.0037% and a long/short account ratio of 2.28, with 69.5% of accounts long, show positioning tilted long but not crowded, and RSI at 42.73 alongside a bearish MACD signal keeps the composite trend reading sideways. The Fear & Greed Index at 51 out of 100 sits in neutral territory, so the picture changes only if price gives up the $80,310 shelf or clears the $84,208 ceiling (as of 22:19 UTC).