A 2% discount decided which company bought bitcoin last week

Strive bought 1,375 bitcoin last week. Strategy bought none. The two companies run the same funding machine, and the difference between them came down to two dollars on a hundred-dollar share.

The same machine, two dollars apart

Both companies fund bitcoin with a perpetual preferred share that carries a $100 stated amount and a dividend rate the issuer moves up or down to hold the market price at $100. Strive's is SATA, Strategy's is STRC. SATA and STRC are the same design down to the mechanism.

Strive set SATA at 13% a year and has paid it every business day since 16 June, the first US-listed security to do that. Compounded across roughly 250 business days the effective rate reaches 13.88%. The share trades around $100 and the preferred is closing in on a $1 billion market value.

Strategy set STRC at 12% for September. CoinDesk reports the share has not returned to $100 since mid-May, and it changed hands near $98 this week. At that price the running yield is 12.24%, which is 1.64 points behind SATA on an effective basis.

“SATA Stock is the first U.S. listed security to pay cash dividends every business day.”

— Strive, Inc., Strive investor relations, 2026

Quote source: Strive investor relations, first-quarter 2026 results

Why two dollars stops the machine

A two-dollar gap sounds cosmetic. It decides whether the machine runs.

These companies raise money by selling more of the preferred at the market. Sell at $100 and you take in $100 for every $100 of obligation you create, then spend it on bitcoin. Sell at $98 and you take in $98 for the same $100 of obligation, so every share issued hands two dollars to the buyer and the funding stops paying for itself.

Where the week went

So Strive kept issuing and kept buying. It paid $109 million for 1,375 coins, an average of $79,273, and now holds 24,531 bitcoin worth about $1.93 billion. Its preferred, at roughly $1 billion, funds about half that stack.

Strategy spent its week on the other side of the same equation. It put $176.3 million into buying back 1.81 million STRC shares at an average of $97.40 and added no bitcoin at all. Retiring a 12% obligation below par is the trade available to it while the share sits under $100.

Strategy holds 845,050 bitcoin against Strive's 24,531, which makes it 34 times larger. Last week the smaller company was the one accumulating.

What the rate costs

This is not the first time STRC has set Strategy's agenda. In August the company sold bitcoin to fund preferred dividends, and its return to buying on 31 August came after a two-month pause.

Strive's rate is the reason its share holds par, and that rate is a cost. Paying 13.88% on a billion dollars runs to roughly $139 million a year, against a bitcoin stack of $1.93 billion. Strategy pays less and buys less. Neither position is free, and the market has priced the difference at two dollars.

None of this should be read as personalized investment advice.