The market capitalization of Strategy’s STRC, the once-$10.5 billion stock that was supposed to pay better than a high-yield bank account or money market, sank to another all-time low beneath $7.2 billion this morning.
For four uninterrupted days, the stock has crashed lower each day. By 9:33am today, it was trading 29% beneath the par value the company advertises.
Indeed, the price of each STRC share is supposed to trade at $100 while Strategy pays shareholders an 11.5% annualized dividend.
Shares were, in fact, trading at $100 as recently as May 14. Well, this morning, they were trading at $71.25.
Bitcoin will pay for everything if it rallies 30% a year
Strategy is a bitcoin (BTC) acquisition company whose founder Michael Saylor believes BTC is going to rally annually with a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) near 30%. He even created a calculator to forecast the price of his company’s common stock, MSTR, under the assumption that BTC would never have a down year.
Based on his bullish conviction, Strategy issues a variety of securities that pay far less than Saylor’s forecasted rally in BTC, under the assumption that Strategy’s BTC holdings will eventually rally enough to make up for all of its payouts.
It will come as a surprise to no one that BTC has not rallied that much recently. Over the last five years, the CAGR of BTC is less than 13%.
Embarrassingly, Strategy president Phong Le publicly admitted a few months ago that retail investors hold about 80% of the supply of STRC, meaning that the damage is disproportionately affecting working-class investors who listened to the company’s forecast.
Read more: STRC crashes as Strategy’s unrealized BTC losses exceed $13 billion
According to Saylor, STRC was supposed to be a low-volatility competitor to a high-yield bank account or money market, paying above-market dividends to people who could not afford the downside volatility of BTC itself.
Unfortunately, STRC now has demonstrated plenty of downside and, unlike BTC, has no meaningful upside beyond its $100 par value.
Making today even worse, Strategy’s common stock, MSTR, fell to a fresh 52-week low of $82.33 the same morning. That is about 82% below its 52-week high of $457.22.
STRC is down 24% in one month
Although the collapsing value of Strategy’s securities is the most damaging, it is also remarkable how fast the safety margin behind STRC’s payout has evaporated.
STRC has lost one-quarter of its share price within just 30 days.
Strategy has previously touted 71 years of dividend coverage from its BTC reserve as recently as November 2025. By June 17 the company claimed, “We have 32 years of dividend coverage through our BTC Reserve.” Within hours, as bitcoin slid further, even that figure fell to 31.
More than half the cushion vanished in roughly seven months. Today, that number is below 30 years.
As the price of BTC falls, years of supposed dividend coverage by Strategy’s BTC holdings have vanished within weeks.
Despite the bear market, CEO Le has tried to reassure the market that Strategy will not dump most of its holdings anytime soon. He told CNBC that the company would sell BTC only under specific conditions, such as funding the STRC dividend or tax optimization, and only when the move is accretive to BTC per share.
For shareholders, that is less a guarantee than a map of the scenarios under which selling BTC becomes Strategy’s plan.
Saylor pitched STRC as a low-friction way to earn yield, with daily liquidity and no management fees. It was supposed to be a money-market substitute backed by BTC. It is now delivering the opposite experience for shareholders with today’s new all-time low.
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