Bitcoin Back Below $60,000 Puts Strategy’s STRC Machine on Trial

Bitcoin is back below $60,000, and the slip is doing more than testing a chart line. The largest cryptocurrency fell as much as 3.4% to $62,184 on Thursday and is sitting roughly 50% below its October 2024 record, with the move now attributed to mounting pressure on Strategy Inc.’s preferred-stock financing machine and to rate-hike fears hitting risk assets. Strategy’s common shares have slid for six straight sessions, hitting their lowest level since February 2024. The company’s STRC perpetual preferred traded briefly below $83 the same day. The crypto market is now reading STRC’s price as a referendum on whether Strategy, the largest corporate Bitcoin buyer, can keep raising capital at a profit while the underlying token keeps sliding, laid out in the slide back below $60,000 on Strategy and rate fears.

STRC Has Become the Vote on Saylor’s Machine

STRC was designed to trade around a $100 par value, raise capital, buy Bitcoin, and pay a double-digit annual dividend. The preferred has not traded at $100 since May 15, the ex-dividend date for last month’s payout. Below par, Strategy is raising capital at a loss because the effective yield it ends up paying climbs as the price falls, a dynamic the company itself flagged when it published the rate-adjustment framework. The instrument briefly traded below $83 on Thursday.

Joshua Lim, global co-head of markets at FalconX, put it bluntly. “All eyes are on STRC price as a measure of market pressure on Strategy. The market is likely to test the company’s resolve to continue buying BTC instead of selling a block to shore up cash reserves and extend the STRC dividend runway.” Under that reading, every STRC print is now a vote on whether the buying continues.

Strategy’s STRC instrument page sets the variable annualized dividend rate at 11.50% on the $100 stated amount as of June 2026. The preferred is engineered to pull back toward par: when the price falls below $99, at-the-market issuance is suspended and the monthly dividend rate can be increased. The company publishes a recommendation of at least 25 basis points for prices between $95 and $99, and at least 50 basis points below $95. The mechanism is built to fire automatically once the price breaks below $99. That pullback force is being tested in real time, with Strategy now paying a higher effective yield on every STRC share it issues.

• STRC print: briefly below $83 on Thursday
• Stated dividend: 11.50% annualized on $100 stated amount (Strategy, June 2026)
• Last at par: May 15, ex-dividend date for prior payout
• Designed anchor: $100 stated value with pullback mechanism below $99

What CryptoQuant Says Has to Change at Strategy

Onchain analytics firm CryptoQuant published a report on June 23, the day before Bitcoin slipped back through $60,000, recommending that Strategy halt Bitcoin purchases and rebuild its cash reserve, laid out in the CryptoQuant case for pausing Bitcoin purchases. STRC had dropped about 17.5% below its $100 par level at the time of the report. Annual dividend obligations had nearly quadrupled to $1.2 billion since the start of 2026 while cash reserves had fallen 38% in the same window.

Dividend coverage, the measure of how long the reserve could keep funding payouts, collapsed from more than seven years to about 14 months. CryptoQuant put the recovery threshold at about $2.8 billion in cash, equivalent to roughly 24 months of dividend coverage at the current rate. Strategy reported a $1.1 billion reserve in mid-June. The shortfall between the current reserve and the recovery target is the single number that frames every other reading of STRC’s price.

The deeper number is the unrealized loss. “The company sits on a $10.6 billion unrealized loss, with all Bitcoin purchased in 2024, 2025, and 2026 underwater,” CryptoQuant wrote in the report. CryptoQuant’s research head Julio Moreno argued that any forced BTC sale at current prices would crystallize large losses and destroy shareholder value. The framing tracks with how Strategy has historically defended the preferred stack.

Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer rejected comparisons between STRC and Terra’s collapsed stablecoin, describing the funding engine as “less efficient” but functional. CryptoQuant went further, with a prescription that included a halt to accumulation. The two camps agree the machine is straining. They disagree on how close it is to a forced sale.

The reserve needed to reach about $2.8 billion, or 24 months of coverage, for STRC to recover.

Julio Moreno, research head at CryptoQuant, made the case in a report shared with CoinDesk on June 23 and covered the next day.

A Macro Stack Lining Up Against Bitcoin

Bitcoin has lost about 50% of its value since reaching a record high in October 2024. The June slide is not a crypto-only story. US spot Bitcoin ETFs entered one of their longest outflow streaks of the year, with Coinbase’s premium staying negative as US investors sold during recent sessions. Saylor has pointed to roughly $400 billion of capital markets funding for AI over six months and about $4 billion of Bitcoin ETF outflows since May 14. He has framed the move as a capital rotation, with the implication that the impairment story is the wrong frame.

Grayscale head of research Zach Pandl went further on the Strategy side. “Strategy’s leveraged business model is under pressure, and that has increased volatility for the entire bitcoin market,” Pandl said, adding that the company’s ability to accumulate new tokens at current share prices, for both STRC and common MSTR, is limited.

QCP Capital wrote that the underperformance is driven in part by concerns Strategy may need to sell more Bitcoin to fund dividend payments, especially after buying back $1.5 billion of its 2029 Convertible Senior Notes. The hawkish turn at Warsh’s first FOMC meeting and its hawkish dot plot on June 17 had already lifted the implied probability of a July rate hike to 18% on CME FedWatch, the first meeting to send a clear inflation-fight signal under Warsh’s tenure. Bitcoin’s prior test of the $60,000 support zone, set up by a head-and-shoulders breakdown on June 23, is the chart the rate signal is now hitting. Lim at FalconX named the rates side: “There’s also the issue of rising interest rate expectations and how that will impact BTC and other risk assets.”

The $10.6 Billion Settlement Hanging Over Friday

More than $10.6 billion in Bitcoin options are set to expire on June 26, the largest and most closely watched expiry on the calendar. Just $2 billion of that open interest is currently in the money, leaving roughly $8.6 billion, or 80%, out of the money. The imbalance, with only about 20% of contracts profitable at current spot, is set up to fuel sharp swings as market makers and traders adjust positions into the settlement.

The max pain price for the June 26 expiry sits at $74,000, about 14% above Bitcoin’s current spot near $60,000. Max pain is the level at which the largest number of contracts expires worthless. The theory is that market makers and traders push price toward it as expiry approaches. The $60,000 put strike holds $450 million in open interest as a key downside support level; Bitcoin tested it again on Wednesday. The $80,000 call, with $406 million in exposure, remains the market’s major upside hurdle, sitting well above the current tape.

Detailed in the $10.6 billion June 26 Bitcoin options expiry breakdown:

Where the Math Sits for Strategy

Strategy carries roughly $12.13 billion in cumulative preferred equity across STRC, STRF, STRK and STRE, with about $1.313 billion in annual dividends on the cumulative stack. STRC alone sits at about $8.54 billion in notional value, with annual obligations near $982 million at the current 11.50% rate, and trades with about $375 million in average daily liquidity. STRD adds another $140 million in non-cumulative preferred dividends, and residual convertibles add roughly $35 million, bringing total preferred-and-convertible servicing to about $1.488 billion per year.

Strategy launched STRC in July 2025 with a $2.521 billion raise, the largest U.S. IPO at the time. On March 23, 2026, the company announced its “42/42” plan: $42 billion of additional ATM authorizations split equally between MSTR and STRC, with the explicit goal of reaching 1 million BTC by year-end. STRC has also started showing up in stablecoin protocol reserves as a yield-bearing asset, broadening demand beyond Strategy’s direct investor base. Saylor has called STRC Strategy’s “iPhone moment” for bringing in income-oriented buyers.

Strategy holds more than 840,000 Bitcoin, over 4% of the total supply that will ever exist. The dollar reserve built up through MSTR share issuance covered roughly 18 months of preferred dividends at OakResearch’s late-April snapshot. CryptoQuant’s prescription is to push that back toward 24 months by halting new buys and switching from continuous accumulation to a more disciplined timing model.

Detailed in the full breakdown of STRC’s capital structure:

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Bitcoin’s slide below $60,000 a Strategy problem or a Bitcoin problem?

It is both, and the line between them has blurred. The token is down about 50% since its October 2024 record for reasons that include the hawkish turn at Kevin Warsh’s first FOMC, six weeks of US spot Bitcoin ETF outflows, and a rotation toward AI stocks. Strategy Inc.’s preferred-stock machine adds a specific feedback loop. FalconX’s Joshua Lim framed STRC’s price as a test of the company’s resolve: keep buying, or sell Bitcoin to fund the dividend runway.

What is STRC and why does it matter for Bitcoin’s price?

STRC is Strategy Inc.’s floating-rate perpetual preferred stock, listed on Nasdaq, designed to trade around a $100 stated amount. The instrument pays an 11.50% variable annualized dividend. It was built as a capital-raising machine: the company sells the preferred, uses the proceeds to buy Bitcoin, and pays holders a dividend funded mainly through MSTR common stock issuance. When STRC trades below par, Strategy is effectively paying more for capital than it receives. That dynamic is what links the preferred’s price to Bitcoin’s spot price.

Why is CryptoQuant telling Strategy to stop buying Bitcoin?

CryptoQuant’s June 23 report argued that Strategy has overextended itself. The firm’s annual dividend obligations have nearly quadrupled to $1.2 billion since the start of 2026, while its cash reserve has fallen 38% to $1.1 billion. Dividend coverage has shrunk from more than seven years to about 14 months. CryptoQuant’s research head Julio Moreno put the recovery threshold at about $2.8 billion in cash, or 24 months of coverage, and called for a halt to new Bitcoin purchases until then.

How large is the June 26 options expiry?

More than $10.6 billion in notional Bitcoin options are set to expire on Friday, the largest expiry on the calendar. Roughly $8.6 billion of that, or 80% of the open interest, is currently out of the money. Just $2 billion sits in the money. The max pain price is $74,000, about 14% above Bitcoin’s current spot. The $60,000 put strike holds $450 million in open interest as a downside support level.

Could Strategy be forced to sell Bitcoin to pay dividends?

Strategy is not contractually required to sell Bitcoin to defend STRC, and its prospectus reserves the right to raise the dividend or issue new shares. But CryptoQuant’s report flagged that any forced BTC sale at current prices would crystallize a large part of the $10.6 billion unrealized loss sitting across Strategy’s 2024 to 2026 purchases. The benchmark for whether that risk is being priced in is whether STRC climbs back toward $100 par or stays below.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Cryptocurrency markets are highly volatile, and the figures cited are accurate as of the publication date. Readers should consult a qualified financial professional before making any investment decisions.