If the world’s largest corporate holder of Bitcoin wants to take pressure off Stretch (STRC), it needs to stop purchasing the digital asset immediately and focus purely on shoring up cash, the analytics firm’s Head of Research, Julio Moreno, shared in a note.
“As cash reserves fell while dividend obligations rose, STRC dividend coverage collapsed from more than 7 years at the start of 2026 to just 14 months today,” Moreno highlighted. “A higher cash reserve is the most direct signal the market needs to regain confidence in STRC.”
From Moreno’s perspective, Strategy needs to accumulate cash reserves that would last the company 24 months. The company should also establish a “systematic framework” for timing its purchases and a framework for selling Bitcoin in a more disciplined way.
Since early 2026, Strategy’s dividend obligations have nearly quadrupled to $1.2 billion annualized. Moreno described ballooning costs as a “structural liability” that has the potential to compound pressure that the preferred stock has already come under.
The air of caution has coincided with a dip in Strategy’s common shares. The firm’s stock price tumbled more than 10% to a 27-month low of $92.28. That represented a nearly 80% decline from a multi-year peak of $457.22 last year.
STRC has enabled Strategy to accumulate swaths of Bitcoin this year. When the stock trades at or above the $100 mark, the company issues more shares to buy more Bitcoin. Since its introduction less than a year ago, Strategy has issued more than $10 billion of the product.
Moreno argued that Strategy is between a rock and a hard place. If the Bitcoin-buying firm decided to further pare its holdings and shore up cash for dividend payments, then the sale would solidify unrealized losses on the firm’s balance sheet and “destroy shareholder value.”
Earlier this week, the Tysons Corner, Virginia-based firm signaled that it currently owns 847,363 Bitcoin. With the digital asset’s fall on Wednesday, the firm’s stockpile was worth $50 billion, pushing the total value of its holdings roughly $13 billion underwater.
