Strive Locks In 15% Yield to Fund Its $3 Billion Bitcoin Bet

Investors buying into Strive’s new preferred stock offering are locking in a 16.7% effective yield, a rate that underscores the extreme cost of capital for public companies converting their balance sheets into digital assets.

The Nasdaq-listed firm priced 7 million shares of its 15% Series A Perpetual preferred stock, branded SATS, at $90 each on October 15, according to a regulatory filing published Monday. The deal is scheduled to settle October 20 and will raise approximately $630 million in gross proceeds.

Because the dividend is calculated against a $100 stated value rather than the $90 purchase price, buyers receive $15 annually per share. That 16.7% return dwarfs current corporate bond yields and reflects the premium fixed-income investors demand to fund aggressive cryptocurrency accumulation strategies.

The cash is already earmarked. Between October 12 and 16, Strive bought 4,045 BTC at an average price of about $82,803 per coin, lifting its total holdings to 36,818 BTC, the filing shows. At recent prices, that stash is valued at roughly $3 billion.

Securing this much liquidity required tapping multiple funding channels simultaneously. Days before pricing the SATS offering, warrant exercises on October 12 and 13 generated about $369.2 million. Holders converted 273,493,909 warrants into 13,674,703 new Class A shares, diluting the existing float by 13.5% as outstanding shares jumped from 101.2 million to 114.8 million in a single week. No traditional warrants remain following the expiration of unexercised contracts on October 13.

Preferred stock carries distinct risks compared to common equity or secured debt. Dividends are paid only when declared by the board. While Strive structured the SATS shares as cumulative—meaning any skipped payments accrue as arrears—the company set aside $22.50 per share in a reserve specifically to cover the first 18 months of dividends. Regular dividend dates begin November 9.

This financing structure arrives just as index providers tighten the rules governing which companies qualify for passive investment funds. MSCI finalized a rule on October 15 targeting “non-operating companies,” requiring firms to pass screens for substantial operating assets and follow-up financial tests or face removal from its benchmarks after the close of November 30. The final list of affected companies will be published November 11.

Strategy, the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin with 848,517 BTC, publicly opposed the MSCI proposal. Chief executive Michael Saylor called it discriminatory in a September letter. Strategy also purchased 267 BTC last week for about $22.1 million and spent $193.1 million repurchasing its own STRC preferred stock, expanding that buyback program from $2 billion to $3 billion. Strive currently holds 505,000 shares of that specific STRC security.

Strive’s transformation from a political project into a leveraged crypto treasury vehicle has been rapid. Co-founded in 2022 by former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy as an anti-ESG asset manager, the firm adopted Bitcoin as a reserve asset in May 2025 during a merger with Asset Entities. It then agreed in September to acquire Semler Scientific, a medical device maker holding about 5,000 BTC, in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $1.3 billion.

When Semler shareholders approved that deal in January, the combined entity held roughly 12,800 BTC. Holdings have nearly tripled since. The most recent acquisition batch included 1,223 coins bought between October 14 and 16 at a lower average of about $81,734, slightly below the week’s overall average.

Beyond Bitcoin, other firms are testing similar limits with different assets. Tom Lee’s Bitmine added 12,535 ETH, worth about $30 million, bringing its total to 6,041,481 ETH, or 4.9% of Ethereum’s circulating supply of roughly 122.1 million tokens. Lee has stated purchasing will stop once the firm reaches a 5% concentration threshold, citing broad risk-off market shifts, AI funding concerns, U.S.-Iran tensions, midterm election jitters, and rising bond yields.

Strive ended the week with $317.5 million in cash, an increase of $7.2 million from the prior period.