Strategy’s STRC Becomes World’s Largest Preferred Stock in Under One Year, Saylor Says

Key Takeaways:

Strategy’s Michael Saylor unveiled STRC at Bitcoin 2026, a digital credit instrument that reached $8.5 billion in nine months.
STRC targets a private credit market exceeding $3.5 trillion, with 10% capture potentially unlocking $350 billion in digital yield.
Saylor projects digital credit will scale into trillions globally, with shelf registrations already hitting $21 billion in under one year.

Saylor Says STRC Hits $8.5 Billion in Nine Months, Targets $350B Digital Credit Slice

Saylor opened his keynote by framing the past year as a turning point for digital credit, a category he described as engineered credit built on bitcoin as the underlying capital asset. He said the conditions for this product category had existed for decades, but that no one had assembled the pieces in the right way.

“Digital credit is a killer application of digital capital,” Saylor told attendees. “By combining listed public companies, bitcoin as a balance sheet asset, perpetual preferred equity, and a shelf registration with an ATM program, we were able to create something that had never existed before.”

Strategy holds 818,334 bitcoin, making it the largest corporate bitcoin holder in the world. Saylor used that position as the foundation for his argument that bitcoin’s returns can be split between long-term capital holders and short-term credit investors seeking steady yield.

The distinction between capital and credit ran through the entire presentation. Capital, Saylor explained, suits investors willing to hold through volatility with no cash flows for years at a time. Credit suits those who want a predictable income without managing that risk themselves.

“The world runs on credit,” Saylor said. “Our company converts capital into credit. We take the BTC commodity and convert it into currency. We take risk and overcollateralize to strip it away.”

STRC is structured around that overcollateralization model. Saylor said a five-to-one collateral ratio means the underlying asset can fall 80% and still leave credit investors fully protected. The capital investor absorbs that loss while the credit holder is insulated.

Bitcoin has delivered approximately 38% annual returns over the past five years, Saylor noted, outperforming gold, real estate, and money market instruments. He argued that it creates enough headroom to pay credit investors an 11% yield while the remainder compounds for equity holders.

Bitcoin’s volatility currently runs around 40. By stripping risk through overcollateralization and active management, Saylor said STRC has compressed that volatility significantly, with targets to reduce it further. The result is a product that extracts yield within a month rather than asking investors to wait a decade for gains.

Saylor pointed to the private credit market, which he said exceeds $3.5 trillion globally, as the immediate opportunity. He described that market as illiquid, opaque, and largely restricted to qualified investors with high fees. Digital credit, he argued, is liquid, transparent, scalable, and fee-free.

“Even if it captures 10% of the private credit market, that represents $350 billion,” Saylor said.

STRC’s shelf registration has expanded to $21 billion, which Saylor said far exceeds historical norms. The instrument is accessible through major brokerage platforms to retail, institutional, and corporate investors. He added that return-of-capital dividends can be structured for tax deferral, allowing investors to receive income without triggering immediate taxable events.

The longer-term plan, Saylor said, includes increasing dividend frequency, expanding into ETFs and indexes, and eventually bringing high-yield digital savings instruments to billions of users worldwide.