Analysis of Strategy's 'BTC Floor' Metric for STRC Preferred Stock

Strategy, the Bitcoin treasury company, is marketing a roughly $13,400 “BTC Floor” for STRC, its variable-rate cumulative perpetual preferred stock. With Bitcoin near $78,000, the label sounds like a vast buffer. The SEC-filed briefing defines something narrower: the Bitcoin price at which Strategy’s illustrative STRC coverage ratio reaches 1.0x.

The metric provides no claim on Strategy’s Bitcoin and carries no solvency or recovery meaning. STRC closed at $97.33 on Aug. 28, giving holders a simple 12.33% effective yield at the current $12 annualized dividend. The filed dashboard used an Aug. 21 price of $96.18 and listed a 12.48% yield, $9.972 billion notional, 59 basis points of BTC Credit, 4.68% BTC Risk and a -14.61% BTC Floor ARR.

The quotient and its moving parts

The BTC Rating divides the dollar value of Strategy’s Bitcoin reserve by a covered-notional denominator. The floor reverses the calculation: covered notional divided by the number of Bitcoin held. Spot Bitcoin changes the displayed rating; with every company input fixed, it leaves the 1.0x price unchanged.

Strategy’s denominator starts with $6.714 billion of debt, subtracts $6.69 billion of USD assets, then adds $1.284 billion of senior STRF and $9.972 billion of STRC. That produces about $11.28 billion. Its 840,447 Bitcoin were worth $64.718 billion at the dashboard’s $77,004 price, producing 5.74x, displayed as 5.7x.

Strategy reports an unrounded floor of $13,415. Using the rounded denominator and Bitcoin count gives about $13,421, both commonly shown as roughly $13,400. With Bitcoin market data at $78,440.50 during the Aug. 30 research pass, the rating would rise to about 5.84x if the dated company inputs stayed fixed, while the floor would remain near $13,421.

USD assets move the threshold. Depleting the $1.59 billion USD Cash pool without reducing debt or preferred notional would lift the modeled point to about $15,313. Depleting all $6.69 billion of USD assets on uses that retired no counted claims would push it toward $21,381. These sensitivities hold every other input constant.

Stress management begins well before legal recovery. In the latest disclosed week, Strategy sold 18,261,118 MSTR shares for $2.0065 billion. It spent $136.4 million repurchasing 1,431,212 STRC shares, added $300 million to the USD Reserve and put the balance into USD Cash. It sold no Bitcoin. Funding came through common issuance, so dilution was the immediate cost to MSTR holders.

Future choices remain discretionary. Strategy had $516.6 million of preferred repurchase authority and $1 billion for MSTR remaining, but neither program requires purchases. The $5.10 billion USD Reserve is designated by board policy for preferred dividends and debt interest. USD Cash can also fund Bitcoin purchases, repurchases, note repayment or reserve growth. Neither pool is pledged to STRC.

STRC cash dividends require declaration and legally available funds, although missed installments accumulate and compound. Its market price and cash timing can therefore deteriorate before the modeled ratio reaches 1.0x. In an actual restructuring, creditors, subsidiary liabilities and STRF rank ahead of STRC; junior preferred and MSTR common rank behind it.

The $13,400 figure maps one dated set of assets and counted claims. Earlier pressure points include capital-market access, available cash and discretionary allocation decisions, each of which can shift cost among MSTR holders, STRC holders and the Bitcoin reserve.