decrypt.co
Michael Saylor’s Strategy has yet again pulled off the largest crypto-linked equity raise this year, closing a $2.5 billion offering on Tuesday through a deal involving STRC, a newly created class of perpetual preferred stock that pays a floating monthly dividend starting at 9%.
Proceeds were used to buy 21,021 BTC at an average price of $117,256, bringing Strategy’s total holdings to 628,791 BTC, worth more than $74 billion at current prices.
Once listed, STRC would be the first “U.S. exchange-listed perpetual preferred security issued by a Bitcoin treasury company to pay monthly dividends,” the company said in a statement. The stock begins trading on the Nasdaq on Wednesday.
The STRC sale marks Strategy’s largest capital raise to date, surpassing its $800 million convertible note offering from June last year. It also follows the March launch of STRF, which Saylor initially described as their “crown jewel,” backed by a $2.1 billion at-the-market program.
Unlike STRF, the new STRC offering is aimed more squarely at retail income investors, with floating monthly payouts and no maturity.
Yield products such as this “offer exposure without direct spot market volatility,” Vincent Liu, chief investment officer at Kronos Research, told Decrypt, marking the progress among “structured capital flows that deepen Bitcoin liquidity without pressuring the order book.”
Other observers say the raise shows strong demand for financial instruments that package Bitcoin exposure in less volatile, more accessible forms.
“Institutions want Bitcoin exposure but need it packaged like traditional investments,” Ryan Yoon, senior analyst at Tiger Research, told Decrypt. “STRC works because it pays dividends like a bond while giving indirect Bitcoin exposure, solving the problem for pension funds and insurers who can't buy Bitcoin directly.”
Investors, meanwhile, appear to be treating it as both a “yield product that fits their compliance requirements” and “a way to get crypto exposure without the operational headaches of holding Bitcoin themselves,” Yoon said.
The corporate Bitcoin treasury playbook, as espoused by Strategy, “looks simple but isn't easy to copy,” Yoon said.
“You need three things: enough Bitcoin to be credible, access to Wall Street financing tools, and a stock price that trades above the value of your Bitcoin holdings.”
But what comes next for other “digital asset treasury” companies trying to follow the same path?
“Most wannabe digital asset treasury companies lack all three,” Yoon argued, pointing to how the model worked for Strategy “because they got there first and built scale.”
Newer entrants, however, would “struggle because they don't have the credibility or financing access.”
“For the model to really scale, these companies need a brand beyond just hoping the price goes up,” Yoon said.