Five tickers, one trick: raise dollars, buy Bitcoin, owe a coupon forever. Here's what each one costs in BTC.
Five preferreds,
one funding model
Each series raises dollars, Strategy buys BTC. The coupon comes out of that BTC stack forever — these are perpetuals, no maturity date. The forecast matters precisely because the obligation never ends: if BTC compounds faster than the coupon rate, the cumulative BTC ever sold converges to a finite ceiling — and the rest of the stack survives in perpetuity.
What you get if you buy one today
The coupon is set against $100 par at issuance — a fixed dollar amount per year, forever. Market yield is what that same coupon earns on what you actually paid: coupon ÷ price. So a "10% preferred" trading at $80 yields 12.5% on capital, because $10 ÷ $80 = 12.5%. That spread between coupon-on-par and yield-on-cost is where real returns live. Except STRC: it adjusts the coupon to defend the $100 price, so it should always sit close to par with the variable rate doing the work.
| Ticker | Coupon (par) | Annual $/sh | Recent price | vs. par | Market yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| STRK | 8.0% | $8.00 | $87.00 | -13.0% | 9.20% |
| STRF | 10.0% | $10.00 | $96.00 | -4.0% | 10.42% |
| STRD | 10.0% | $10.00 | $82.00 | -18.0% | 12.20% |
| STRC (variable) | 11.5% | $11.50 | $99.85 | -0.2% | 11.52% |
| STRE | 10.0% | $10.00 | $98.00 | -2.0% | 10.20% |
Prices as of 2026-04-24. Discount-to-par boosts yield; premium drags it down. STRC's variable coupon is the lever the issuer uses to keep that premium near zero.
Why they only ATM near par
The lifetime cost of one share's coupon stream is
(coupon / k) / ((1+CAGR)^(1/k) − 1)
— the dollar value of every coupon Strategy will ever pay on that share, summed
over the perpetual stream and discounted at the BTC growth rate. k is
payments per year (4 for STRK/STRF/STRD/STRE, 12 for STRC). It comes from
summing a shrinking geometric series; the
BTC-cost page
derives it. The number is fixed by the coupon and cadence — independent of
where shares trade. ATM proceeds, on the other hand, vary with price.
Net retained per share = ATM price − lifetime cost.
For a 10% quarterly preferred at CAGR=30%, lifetime cost is about $37/share.
ATM at par ($100) retains $63 of permanent BTC. ATM at $82 retains $45.
The deeper the discount, the smaller the permanent BTC the issuance leaves behind.
| Ticker | ATM @ price | Lifetime cost | Net for BTC | vs. ATM @ par | Issuer's call |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| STRK | $87.00 | $29.50 | $57.50 | -18% | Don't ATM — too dilutive vs par |
| STRF | $96.00 | $36.88 | $59.12 | -6% | Marginal — ATM only if forced |
| STRD | $82.00 | $36.88 | $45.12 | -29% | Don't ATM — too dilutive vs par |
| STRC | $99.85 | $43.35 | $56.50 | -0% | ATM near par, only in the ~7-10 days before the ex-dividend date when STRC tends to peak |
| STRE | $98.00 | $36.88 | $61.12 | -3% | Marginal — ATM only if forced |
Lifetime cost computed at CAGR = 30%. The "vs. ATM @ par" column shows how much net-retained-per-share is lost (or gained) at the current market price relative to ATMing at $100. The deeper the discount, the bigger the penalty. "Ex-dividend" = the date a buyer no longer gets the next coupon — STRC tends to drift slightly above par in the days before, then drops to par on the ex-date.
Why this matters: Strategy doesn't ATM STRK/STRF/STRD/STRE at current discount-to-par levels — it would lock in coupon obligations priced as though they got $100 of cash, when they only got $82 or $87 or $96. The only preferred they'll ATM is STRC, because the variable coupon keeps it near par. And they time those ATMs to the last 7-10 days before the dividend date, when STRC tends to drift slightly above par before the ex-div drop. For the common (MSTR) the analogous test is mNAV: only ATM common when mNAV > 1.0, otherwise you're selling Bitcoin at a discount.
Why aren't preferred prices live?
BTC spot price refreshes every five minutes from Coinbase. Preferred secondary-market prices (STRK/STRF/STRD/STRC/STRE) come from a CSV that we update by hand. That's a deliberate choice, not laziness — the math tells you why.
The dividend burn doesn't depend on the secondary-market price at all. The coupon is fixed in dollar terms — rate × $100 par × shares. Once a preferred is issued, the BTC stack supporting it has to fund that exact stream forever. Whether the secondary market quotes STRK at $87 or $93 today changes nothing about what the company owes its existing holders. So the forecast charts on this site, the per-tranche burn tables, the surviving-BTC projections — none of those need a live pref price.
Where the price does matter is in the ATM-accretion decision, and the math there explains why Strategy mostly isn't ATMing the fixed-rate prefs right now. Lifetime cost of a 10% quarterly pref's coupon stream at CAGR=30% works out to about $37 per share (≈ 37% of par, at the actual quarterly cadence; the simpler annual-only approximation overstates this at $43). If you ATM at par, $100 cash in − $37 lifetime cost = $63 of permanent BTC retained per share. But if you ATM at $80, you only captured $80 of cash for the same $37 obligation — net retained drops to $43 per share, a 32% hit. The deeper the discount, the bigger the gap.
That's why STRK and STRD don't get ATMed at current discount-to-par levels.
And it's why the STRC pricing question is a different story
entirely: STRC's monthly rate reset is designed to keep the secondary price
near $100 par. When it drifts below par, the next month's coupon ratchets up
until the price comes back; when it drifts above par, the next coupon ratchets
down. The variable rate IS the price-keeping mechanism. So STRC's secondary
price is reliably ATMable, and the live thing we actually need to track is
the rate, not the price — which is why
strc-rate-history.csv exists
and gets updated when Strategy publishes the monthly reset.
The freshness budget per data source: tranche disclosures are weekly (auto-refreshed via GitHub Action). BTC spot is continuous (live API). STRC's published rate is monthly (manual edit when the press release lands). Preferred secondary prices are weeks-stale because they don't drive anything that needs minute-level accuracy. If that ever changes — say Strategy starts ATMing STRK at par again — the CSV path is two minutes of manual editing per series.
What it costs Strategy in BTC
"BTC earmarked" is the USD raise divided by BTC's price at the IPO — the BTC that preferred's money notionally bought. "Σ sold @ CAGR=30%" is the BTC-cost asymptote: cumulative BTC ever sold to fund the coupon if BTC compounds 30%/yr. The obligation never ends; the BTC drained does.
| Ticker | IPO | Net raised | BTC earmarked | Σ sold @ CAGR=30% | BTC surviving |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| STRK | 2025-02-05 | $563M | 5,765 | 1,701 (30%) | 4,064 |
| STRF | 2025-03-25 | $711M | 8,410 | 3,102 (37%) | 5,309 |
| STRD | 2025-06-10 | $980M | 9,291 | 3,426 (37%) | 5,865 |
| STRC | 2025-07-29 | $2,474M | 21,097 | 9,147 (43%) | 11,951 |
| STRE | 2025-11-13 | $707M | 6,895 | 2,543 (37%) | 4,352 |
| Total | $5.4B | 51,458 | 19,918 | 31,540 | |
Earmarked BTC is illustrative — Strategy's treasury is fungible. The point is scale: if BTC CAGR beats the coupon rate, each raise pays itself back in BTC and then some. See the BTC-cost explainer →