Schiff: Saylor's STRC Is 'Dead'

Strategy, the Nasdaq-listed company run by Michael Saylor, has built its Bitcoin accumulation on serial capital raises, including preferred shares like STRC that pay a 12% dividend to attract yield-seeking buyers. Peter Schiff, a longtime gold advocate and Bitcoin skeptic, has tracked these instruments since their launch, arguing they mask stress in Strategy's model. His 'dead' label follows a familiar pattern of him flagging each new Strategy product as unsustainable.

Holders of STRC are effectively being propped up by Strategy's own purchases: $2.04 billion in buybacks by the third quarter's close kept the stock near par rather than letting market demand set its price. That spending is capital not funneled directly into new Bitcoin, and it signals management will defend the preferred stack's credibility even as Bitcoin's price slides, a trade-off between shoring up debt-like obligations and expanding the core treasury.

Schiff's criticism sharpens a real question: is a dividend-paying preferred share kept at par through issuer buybacks a market-validated instrument or an artificially supported one? Strategy's entire premise rests on continuous access to capital markets to fund Bitcoin buys and service obligations like STRC's payout. A reported $1 billion paper loss during the recent downtrend tests whether that access holds up when the underlying asset is falling rather than rising.

Saylor's teased 'fresh Bitcoin move' is the next concrete signal worth tracking: whether it materializes as a new purchase disclosure in Strategy's regular Monday filings, and at what size relative to prior buys, will show if the company is doubling down despite the paper loss. A pause or a smaller-than-usual purchase would support Schiff's thesis; a large buy would argue the model still has room to run.

Bitcoin barely moved in the 4 hours after the first headline, after a flat 2 hours before.

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