Why Did Strategy Lose Its Bitcoin Premium?
Strategy briefly lost the premium investors had assigned to its bitcoin holdings on Friday, with its enterprise mNAV slipping below 1 as pressure mounted on both the company’s common stock and its preferred share funding structure.
The move came as Strategy’s common shares fell to a recent low of $82.16 on Friday before slipping to around $81.80 in after-hours trading. Bitcoin, meanwhile, was attempting to stabilize near $59,560 after falling to $58,000 on Thursday.
The drop below parity is important because Strategy has long traded not only as a software company with a large bitcoin treasury, but as a leveraged public-market vehicle for bitcoin exposure. When investors pay a premium to the value of the company’s bitcoin holdings, Strategy can use its equity and preferred securities more efficiently to raise capital and buy more bitcoin. When that premium disappears, the model becomes harder to sustain.
Strategy now points to enterprise mNAV rather than the traditional mNAV metric used by some crypto treasury companies. Traditional mNAV compares a company’s equity market capitalization with the value of its digital asset holdings. Enterprise mNAV includes a broader view of the capital structure, including debt, cash, and preferred stock.
In Strategy’s case, a reading below 1 means investors are valuing the company’s overall capital structure at less than the value of the bitcoin held in its treasury. That marks a sharp change for a company whose market value has often reflected a premium for bitcoin accumulation, liquidity, brand recognition, and access to capital markets.
How Did Preferred Shares Change The Risk Profile?
Throughout much of 2026, Strategy has relied heavily on perpetual preferred shares, including STRC, to raise billions of dollars for bitcoin purchases. That funding channel helped the company continue adding bitcoin without depending only on common equity issuance, but it also added a fixed cost burden.
Those securities carry roughly $1.2 billion in annual dividend obligations, while Strategy’s cash reserves have fallen to around $1.4 billion, according to market data cited in the source material. That gap has become central to investor concerns because the preferred share structure requires regular cash payments even when bitcoin prices, common shares, or treasury-company premiums are under pressure.
The result is a more complex version of the original bitcoin treasury trade. Earlier, the market focus was mostly on how much bitcoin Strategy owned and whether its stock traded above the value of those holdings. Now, investors are also weighing dividend obligations, preferred share discounts, cash reserves, and refinancing flexibility.
That shift has put pressure on STRC itself. The preferred security hit a fresh low of around $71.40 on Friday before recovering to close at $74.72, nearly 26% below its intended $100 par value. The discount shows that investors are demanding more compensation for the risks attached to Strategy’s funding model.
Investor Takeaway
Strategy’s mNAV slipping below parity weakens the logic of the bitcoin treasury flywheel. The company can still hold a large bitcoin position, but raising capital becomes more difficult when investors no longer assign a premium to that exposure.
Why Does The Feedback Loop Matter?
The pressure on Strategy reflects a negative feedback loop. A falling common share price reduces the company’s ability to issue equity on attractive terms. Weakness in preferred shares raises questions about the cost and durability of that funding channel. At the same time, bitcoin’s decline reduces the market value of the company’s core treasury asset.
That combination can compress enterprise mNAV quickly. If the market value of the company falls while preferred obligations remain fixed and bitcoin holdings decline in value, investors may start treating the capital structure as a liability rather than a source of leverage.
The issue is not that Strategy has stopped being a bitcoin treasury company. It is that the market is reassessing how much extra value should be assigned to a company whose strategy depends on repeatedly raising capital to buy bitcoin. When the premium is high, the strategy can look self-reinforcing. When the premium falls below parity, the same structure can become self-limiting.
The preferred share discount adds another layer. If securities such as STRC trade well below par, future preferred issuance may need to offer more attractive terms to buyers. That can increase the cost of capital and make the next round of bitcoin purchases less accretive for common shareholders.
Are Other Bitcoin Treasury Firms Facing The Same Pressure?
Strategy is not alone. Several bitcoin treasury companies that followed a similar model are also trading below parity on an enterprise mNAV basis. Japan’s Metaplanet is currently near 0.9, while Nakamoto, backed by David Bailey, is around 0.92.
Those discounts show that the pressure is not limited to one balance sheet. The market appears to be repricing the broader bitcoin treasury trade, especially where companies depend on capital-market issuance to expand their bitcoin holdings.
Strive remains one of the few major bitcoin treasury companies still trading above parity, with an enterprise mNAV of about 1.24. It adopted a similar preferred share funding strategy through its SATA perpetual stock, but investors are still assigning it a premium relative to its bitcoin holdings and broader capital structure.
The split across these companies suggests that investors are becoming more selective. Treasury size alone is no longer enough. The market is looking more closely at cash reserves, dividend obligations, preferred share pricing, and whether management can keep raising capital without diluting common shareholders or increasing financial strain.
For Strategy, the immediate test is whether bitcoin can recover enough to restore confidence in the treasury model and whether its preferred shares can stabilize closer to par. Until then, the company’s mNAV below parity points to a more cautious phase for the bitcoin treasury trade, where balance-sheet mechanics matter as much as the headline bitcoin count.
