When everyone thought they could "lie down and collect interest," the STRC, which is pegged to a par value of 100 US dollars, first encountered issues. Strategy, a publicly traded company mainly focused on Bitcoin as its primary asset allocation and seen as a Bitcoin treasury, presented a different story to the market when it launched the dividend perpetual preferred shares STRC: to lock in funds preferring "high yields and low volatility" with a stable dividend based on a par value of 100 dollars, providing a relatively stable long-term source for Bitcoin asset strategy. Before the ex-dividend date on May 14, the closing price of STRC was still closely tied to its par value, and on the same day, Bitcoin's price exceeded 80,000 US dollars, with treasury shares, preferred shares, and Bitcoin assets all at a peak of sentiment. However, in the ensuing month, as Bitcoin's price retreated and Strategy progressed with capital operations, including the repurchase of corporate bonds, the price of STRC began to weaken continuously, and recently, it first dropped below the psychological anchor of the 100-dollar par value. The price losing ground is not uncommon, but it shook the group of investors originally attracted by the "anchored par value + dividends," hoping to avoid severe volatility: a preferred stock designed to be close to a cash flow instrument was suddenly priced by the market as a risky asset. CoinDesk's report was widely cited by several Chinese media outlets, including PANews, Odaily Planet Daily, and Deep Tide TechFlow, around June 20, with expressions like "multiple pressures," "risk exposure," and "stress testing" becoming commonplace; STRC breaching its par value also transformed from an individual stock news to a symbolic event indicating the entire Bitcoin treasury model being tested in the real market.

From Bitcoin Treasury to Preferred Share Story

Earlier, Strategy had clarified the "treasury" story: treating Bitcoin as the main asset allocation, the company's balance sheet was almost tied to Bitcoin's price. The market labeled it as a "Bitcoin treasury company," which also meant its capital operations — whether through stock issuance, debt issuance, or continuously selling stock through ATMs for cash — naturally depended on Bitcoin's market behavior. Once the price of Bitcoin rose, equity and debt instruments could be issued at higher valuations or lower costs, attracting more funds into this "Bitcoin treasury."

In this logic, STRC's debut appeared as a supplement to the original story. It was designed as a perpetual preferred stock anchored at a par value of 100 dollars, placed within the capital structure, neither fluctuating sharply with Bitcoin like common stock nor directly exposed to the immediate ups and downs of Bitcoin's price. One of the goals of issuing STRC was to attract funds preferring fixed income or lower volatility through relatively stable and predictable dividends, making them more willing to remain long-term in Strategy's Bitcoin strategy. For many institutional and individual investors, STRC was initially imagined as a "high yield, low volatility" alternative: it could share the yield premium brought by the Bitcoin treasury story while relying on the 100-dollar par value design to gain a sort of "safety cushion," appearing on paper as a deal with controllable risk and decent returns.

Since May: STRC's Par Value Defense Breached

Before the ex-dividend date on May 14, STRC's closing price was still around 100 dollars, nearly aligning with its designed par value, while Bitcoin's price exceeded 80,000 dollars, with external sentiment and the product structure of "par value anchoring" jointly supporting an illusion of surface stability. After the ex-dividend date, the script began to flip: Bitcoin retreated from its highs, while Strategy continued the long-term narrative of the "Bitcoin treasury" while advancing corporate bond repurchases and other capital operations; the actions, initially seen as supporting dividends and optimizing the debt structure, were described by the media as another layer of uncertainty in a declining price environment. Research briefs show that since mid-May, STRC's price has continuously weakened, until it recently first fell below the 100 dollar par value; the anchor point once viewed as a "safety cushion" was substantially breached in the market, but the specific date of the breach and intra-day details have yet to be disclosed, further amplifying the market's emotional response to this change.

In a situation where information is not fully transparent, public opinion became an amplifier. CoinDesk was the first to outline STRC's price trend since May, directly placing its weakening and breaching par value into the narrative framework of "Bitcoin correction + corporate capital operations," and redefined this preferred stock's risk image with terms like "multiple pressures" and "stress testing." Around June 20, this narrative was passed on by several Chinese media outlets, including PANews, Odaily Planet Daily, and Deep Tide TechFlow; "STRC breaching par value" was extracted from the originally relatively niche preferred stock context, becoming a litmus test for the Bitcoin treasury model and drawing a clear cognitive breakpoint in investors' minds: par value was no longer viewed as a naturally effective protection zone but rather as a variable needing to be factored into risk budgeting.

The Illusion of High Yields Shattered: Preferred Shares Under Multiple Pressures

Once the collective realization that "par value is not a protection zone" set in, the "multiple pressures" mentioned in the media were no longer abstract adjectives, but were broken down into several concrete paths of concern: one stemming from Bitcoin's price itself, and the other from the series of capital operations by Strategy since May. Bitcoin is the core asset of the company and the retreat of Bitcoin after mid-May would directly reflect on the pressure on its balance sheet, thinning the paper buffer; preferred stock investors would naturally question whether, in case of prolonged cycles, the company's willingness and ability to repay could still match the initial high-yield narrative.

Meanwhile, the company continued to push for capital actions, including corporate bond repurchases and debt/repurchase arrangements. Research briefs did not disclose the specific scale and pace of these operations, leaving external investors to piece together information from fragmented disclosures and media reports: on one hand, there are assets deeply bound to high volatility, and on the other hand, a continuously adjusted debt structure, with a perpetual preferred stock STRC being "anchored" at 100 dollars but lacking any price commitment in between. Information asymmetry and uncertainty itself would be translated by the market into additional risk premiums. The traditional capital market has already seen precedents — whether for perpetual preferred stocks issued by financial institutions or large enterprises, as long as interest rate expectations rise or the issuer's risk perception deteriorates, it is not uncommon for prices to stay below par value for extended periods; the so-called "par value return" has always been merely a hypothesis rather than a contractual clause. Applied to STRC, Bitcoin's correction was viewed by the media as a "stress test" for Strategy’s overall capital model, compounded by complex signals from debt and repurchase arrangements, ultimately repricing what was initially imagined as a "high yield, close to par value, relatively controllable volatility" product into an equity instrument requiring a higher risk compensation, and this is the key reason its breach of par value is difficult to quickly rectify at this stage.

Financing Tool or Radar: The Mirror of the Bitcoin Treasury

For Strategy, STRC breaching par value primarily tears at the narrative boundaries of financing cost and equity story. Originally, this perpetual preferred stock, designed to be pegged to par value and attract "yield-preferred, tolerance for moderate volatility" funds through stable dividends, was placed in a relatively stable position within the capital structure, aimed at securing long-term funds for the Bitcoin asset strategy. When the price deviated from par value and was repriced by the market as a high-risk equity, the next issuance of similar instruments would inevitably face discounting and yield premiums, squashing any future room for the company to raise low-cost funds through STRC or similar securities, and the overall valuation premium of "packing Bitcoin treasury with equity" would also require acceptance of harsher discount rates.

Under the Bitcoin treasury model, this preferred stock thus shifted from a "financing tool" to a "risk window." Given that Strategy's capital operations highly depend on Bitcoin's price, STRC's performance on the secondary market began to be treated as an exposed dashboard by media and investors: after Bitcoin's price correction and the compounding pressures from debt and repurchase arrangements, this was first reflected in the price and yield of the preferred stock, which then inversely mapped the results of stress testing on MSTR's overall capital structure and asset strategy. For others intending to tell a public story based on Bitcoin assets, this process of breaching par value serves as a public lesson — the market perceives similar preferred stocks and yield tools as early probes into treasury risks, rather than as unconditional promises of "par value safety."

Who Dares to Buy STRC in the Next Round of Volatility

STRC's recent breach of par value has released a signal that is already sufficiently clear: the Bitcoin treasury no longer only tells the story of "asset going up;" preferred shares, originally imagined as "par value anchors," will be preferentially discarded in times of Bitcoin price declines and the accumulation of company debt and repurchase arrangements, genuinely reflecting downward pressure, credit risks, and structural uncertainties in prices. Going forward, what truly needs close monitoring is not just the next cycle of Bitcoin's price itself — whether it reproduces the high emotion of May 14 or experiences a longer period of correction — but how this cycle intertwines with Strategy's subsequent capital actions: whether the company will continue to fund through similar means like STRC and ATMs, how bond repurchases and new issuances will reorder risk hierarchies among holders, and whether the market will regard STRC's discount magnitude as a real-time vote on MSTR's overall treasury safety margin. To date, the public information surrounding STRC's price weakening and breaching par value mainly comes from CoinDesk and its analyses cited by Chinese media, lacking precise breach timestamps, transaction data, and management statements, indicating that we can only treat this incident as a mid-point stress test for the Bitcoin treasury model, rather than a definitive judgment; in the next round of Bitcoin volatility, whether STRC will be seen by investors as a continuation of innovative financing tools or as a "radar" exposing treasury risks that requires a higher discount will determine whether this shock is a one-off incident or a new normal that all Bitcoin treasury assets must repeatedly face in the future.

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