Strategy’s Strc preferred stock closed at $89 on Wednesday, its lowest level since the security launched in July 2025, and the drop forced the company to pause the at-the-market program it had been using to help fund bitcoin buying. The move mattered immediately because Strc is designed to sit near $100, and once it slipped below that level, one of Strategy’s financing channels shut down.
Strc fell about 11% below its roughly $100 target price, a slide that also left it trading at a record low while its variable dividend still carried an effective rate of 12.9%. Strategy issues new STRC shares through that at-the-market program only when the stock trades above par, so the weakness cuts directly into how much additional bitcoin the company can finance without leaning on other sources. The company already disclosed that it sold 32 bitcoin for about $2.5 million in late May to fund STRC distributions, and that sale marked the first time it had sold bitcoin since it began accumulating the cryptocurrency in 2022.
The pressure on Strc sits inside a broader strain on Strategy’s capital structure. Last week, the company said it had built a dedicated U.S. dollar reserve to $1.1 billion to cover preferred dividends and debt, even as it said it was still buying 1,587 bitcoin through separate sales of its common stock. That split picture shows how the company is trying to keep its bitcoin strategy moving from several directions at once while one of its preferred-stock pipes has gone quiet.
Strc has dipped below par before, usually during stretches of bitcoin volatility, but the latest move stands out because it came while bitcoin itself was holding around $64,000 to $65,000 this week. Strategy’s common stock, MSTR, also fell about 5% on Wednesday to $116.52, underscoring that the strain was not limited to the preferred share. The open question now is how long Strategy keeps the at-the-market program paused if Strc remains below $100, because every day it stays there leaves the company with less room to fund bitcoin purchases through that route.
With about 846,842 bitcoin on its books, equal to roughly 4% of the supply that will ever exist, Strategy has built its identity around keeping its bitcoin machine running. On Wednesday, Strc showed the limits of that machine: once the stock slipped under the level it is built to hold, the company lost a funding lane it had been counting on.
