Sticking to the same perpetual preferred stock playbook: Strategy is buying back its own issues, while Strive is ramping up new issuances.
Written by Sanqing, Foresight News
On October 13, Strive (ticker: ASST) submitted an 8-K filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), disclosing that it had acquired 3,311 Bitcoin between October 5 and 9 at a total cost of roughly $280 million, with an average purchase price of ~$84,500 per BTC. This brought the company’s total Bitcoin holdings up to 32,773 BTC. This marks Strive’s largest single-round accumulation to date, following its initial position build of 5,816 BTC in September 2025 and the acquisition of ~5,048 BTC from its January 2026 merger with Semler Scientific.
Per data from Bitcoin Treasuries, Strive currently ranks fifth among publicly traded companies by Bitcoin holdings, behind the top four players in descending order: Strategy (848,250 BTC), Metaplanet (44,000 BTC), Twenty One Capital (43,514 BTC), and MARA (35,577 BTC).
On the same day, Strive disclosed a suite of capital market actions: warrants worth approximately $208 million had been fully exercised; it completed amendments to the terms of its first perpetual preferred stock series SATA, formally codifying a requirement that the shares be issued at no less than $100 per share into the official terms, and revising the definition of "business day" to create flexibility for future weekend dividend payments; it also filed a prospectus for its second perpetual preferred stock series SATS, which carries a fixed annual dividend rate of 15%, targeting a fundraising total of roughly $500 million.
From Anti-ESG Fund to Bitcoin Treasury Company
Strive was co-founded in 2022 by American entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and is headquartered in Dallas. Its CEO Matt Cole previously spent 15 years managing fixed income assets at CalPERS, the largest public pension fund in the U.S. The company got its start in asset management, and built its reputation by pushing back against the mainstream ESG (environmental, social, and governance) investment trend. After its transition to a Bitcoin treasury model, its original asset management business remains housed under its subsidiary Strive Asset Management, which currently holds roughly $3 billion in assets under management.
In May 2025, Strive announced a merger with Nasdaq-listed small-cap firm Asset Entities to go public, retaining the stock ticker ASST. After the merger closed on September 12, Strive formally transitioned to a Bitcoin treasury company, and set Bitcoin’s return as its official corporate hurdle rate, requiring all investments to outperform Bitcoin to be considered successful.
Ten days after the merger with Asset Entities closed, on September 22, 2025, Strive made a single block purchase of 5,816 BTC, and simultaneously announced a stock-for-stock acquisition of Semler Scientific. Semler was originally a medical company focused on vascular disease diagnostic equipment, which began accumulating Bitcoin in May 2024 as the second publicly traded U.S. firm to adopt this strategy. The acquisition closed in January 2026, bringing ~5,048 BTC onto Strive’s balance sheet, in what the company billed as the first-ever M&A deal between publicly traded Bitcoin treasury firms.
Strive’s Bitcoin purchase pace remained uneven in the period after, before accelerating markedly in late August: over the 8 weeks between August 14 and October 9, it added 12,527 BTC to its holdings, representing a ~62% increase in total position size.
By contrast, expansion among the top four listed Bitcoin holders had almost stalled over the same period: Strategy’s holdings only grew from 840,447 BTC on August 16 to 848,250 BTC on October 11, for an increase of less than 1%; Metaplanet sold 10,000 BTC in the third quarter before buying back 11,000 BTC, for a net gain of just 1,000 BTC; Twenty One Capital has not added to its holdings since July 2025; and MARA’s position has remained largely flat since May.
No Debt Load, Funding Bitcoin Purchases Solely Via Perpetual Preferred Stock
The core operating model for Bitcoin treasury companies is to raise capital from public markets to buy Bitcoin. The most straightforward approach is issuing new common stock, but this dilutes existing shareholder equity. In January 2025, Strategy launched its first perpetual preferred stock series STRK, pioneering an alternative financing path.
Perpetual preferred stock has no maturity date, meaning issuers have no obligation to repay principal, and only need to make scheduled dividend payments. It also has priority over common stock for both dividend distributions and claims in a bankruptcy liquidation. For the issuing company, the instrument functions exactly like an interest-only, non-maturing loan: income-focused investors receive higher yield, while the company secures funding to buy Bitcoin. As long as Bitcoin’s long-term price appreciation outpaces the cost of preferred stock dividends, all excess upside accrues to common stockholders. In July 2025, Strategy launched STRC, a perpetual preferred stock with a dividend rate adjusted monthly, designed to keep the share price stable near its $100 par value. Michael Saylor has referred to this structure as "digital credit".
In November 2025, Strive launched SATA, a perpetual preferred stock with a nearly identical structural design to Strategy’s offerings, but made two key modifications: first, it avoids taking on interest-bearing debt entirely, and used SATA to refinance the convertible notes inherited from its Semler Scientific acquisition, leaving the company with zero on-balance-sheet debt. By comparison, Strategy still carries roughly $6.7 billion in outstanding convertible notes. Second, it schedules dividend payments every business day starting in June 2026. This change has already influenced Strategy in reverse: the larger firm has proposed converting all of its own preferred stock to daily interest calculation, with a shareholder vote scheduled for October 28.
Strive is far from the only firm adopting this playbook. Japanese listed firm Metaplanet announced in November 2025 a plan to privately place convertible preferred stock series MERCURY with overseas institutional investors, carrying a 4.9% annual dividend rate, but its plan to list the shares publicly was blocked by Japanese exchange rules, and has not been launched to date. The UK-based firm The Smarter Web Company completed the issuance of its preferred stock series MORE on October 12, with an initial 12% annual dividend rate, weekly dividend payments, raising £10 million in proceeds, set to begin trading on the London Stock Exchange on October 14 — though its fundraising scale is far smaller than Strive’s.
Strive measures its leverage using what it calls the "amplification ratio", defined as the combined value of its preferred equity and debt divided by the total market value of its Bitcoin holdings. The higher the ratio, the more the common stock price appreciates when Bitcoin rises — and the sharper the drawdowns when Bitcoin falls. ASST’s price action is a clear example: adjusted for the 1-for-20 reverse stock split completed in February this year, the share price fell from $169.80 on the day of the merger with Asset Entities to $7.16 on February 24, before recovering to $27.59 on October 13. Its price volatility is far higher than that of Bitcoin itself.
Launching New 15% Preferred Stock, Annual Dividend Obligations to Exceed $250 Million
Over the past week, Strive has rolled out a series of moves to adjust its capital structure. On October 5, the company first announced a new $500 million share repurchase authorization for SATA, which can be used to support the share price during periods of volatility when needed. Among the latest disclosures, warrants — the right to purchase newly issued common stock at a pre-agreed strike price — worth ~$208 million were exercised, bringing in a round of common stock financing for the company.
Beyond that, the commitment to issuing SATA at no less than $100 per share was formally codified into the stock’s terms (previously only a verbal pledge) to boost holder confidence. The definition of "business day" was also revised to no longer exclude weekends, creating flexibility for weekend dividend payments once regulatory and settlement conditions allow. Near-term dividend schedules remain unchanged. The company also filed its prospectus for SATS, the second perpetual preferred stock series, which ranks behind SATA in liquidation priority, carries a fixed 15% annual dividend rate, and targets roughly $500 million in fundraising.
The direct purpose of launching SATS is to re-elevate leverage. The common stock raised from recent warrant exercises lowered the amplification ratio, and Cole noted on X that the company’s goal is to keep the ratio above 60% when Bitcoin trades below $100,000. The shift to a fixed dividend rate also stems from a clear observed trend: per Strive’s internal analysis, since the launch of SATA and STRC, the two shares have traded above their $100 par value on only 24% and 16% of trading days respectively, proving that floating rate structures failed to stabilize their market prices.
Foresight News calculates the following rough estimates: as of October 9, Strive holds ~$310 million in cash on its balance sheet. After deducting the $180 million set aside as a one-year dividend reserve for SATA, the company has ~$130 million in freely deployable capital. If SATS raises its full $500 million target, after deducting the $110 million earmarked as an 18-month dividend reserve, ~$390 million will remain available for Bitcoin purchases. Combined, the two pools of capital total roughly $500 million, enough to buy ~6,000 BTC at current market prices, which will push the amplification ratio to approximately 60%.
In addition, final data on warrant exercises is not yet complete, and these exercise proceeds may also generate additional Bitcoin buying demand. Cole noted that the company will release a supplemental 8-K filing before U.S. equity markets open on October 14 to disclose final exercise results, which had not been published as of press time.
Strategy, by contrast, is currently moving in the opposite direction. Last week, it only bought 250 BTC, while spending ~$192 million to repurchase STRC shares. It also holds roughly $4.9 billion in dedicated cash reserves earmarked exclusively for dividend payments. Its total Bitcoin holdings are already ~26 times larger than Strive’s. As the world’s largest Bitcoin treasury company, Strategy’s top priority right now is upholding the credibility of the "digital credit" structure Michael Saylor has championed.
The cost of leveraging up comes with high capital expenses. The combined annual dividend obligations for its two preferred stock series will exceed $250 million, equivalent to nearly 10% of the current market value of Strive’s Bitcoin holdings. As of October 9, Strive’s total cost basis for its Bitcoin position is roughly $2.9 billion, while the fair market value of the holdings is ~$2.7 billion, leaving the company with an unrealized book loss of approximately $200 million.
Strive’s internal modeling uses a base case scenario of 50% annualized Bitcoin price appreciation, where the spread between Bitcoin returns and the 15% annual preferred stock cost accrues to common shareholders. Cole has stated that Strive has a path to becoming the second-largest corporate Bitcoin holder by the end of the year, with progress dependent on two factors: sustained above-par issuances of SATA, and successful full fundraising for SATS. Whether this leverage model ultimately generates returns for common shareholders, however, depends entirely on whether Bitcoin’s long-term price appreciation can outpace the 13% to 15% annual cost of the preferred stock.