Strategy’s (MSTR) Michael Saylor Says STRC Will ‘Blow Up’ After $8.5 Billion Run
Michael Saylor, founder and executive chairman of Strategy, took the Nakamoto Stage at Bitcoin 2026 on Tuesday to argue that the popular nine-month-old stock instrument has become the world’s fastest-growing credit product — and that its expansion has only just begun.
The keynote, built around what Saylor called digital credit, was a structured pitch for STRC, Strategic Variable Ratings Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock, which trades on the Nasdaq near its $100 mark and pays an 11.5% monthly dividend.
He opened with a premise that set the tone for everything that followed: “The world was built on capital. The world runs on credit.”
For Saylor, Bitcoin is a layer of money. It’s what he calls “ideal money” – structured, digital, portable, and historically superior to alternatives. He cited Bitcoin’s roughly 38% return over the past five years compared to gold, the S&P 500, and real estate, which he described unequivocally as “bad.”
STRC is, at its core, a layer of debt built on top: it strips Bitcoin’s volatility out of the equation, passes on excess returns to common shareholders, and delivers what it describes as a “comfortable ride” for investors looking for cash flow rather than price exposure.
The distinction he drew between digital credit and traditional private credit was one of the sharpest arguments in the speech. Private debt, he said, is unfair, vague, unclear, and heavily burdened with fees — it’s built primarily on what the issuers want. Digital credit, according to his definition, is liquid, transparent, uniform, measurable, accessible, and free of charge.
“We’ve designed a digital tool that’s convenient for the investor,” he said, pitching the STRC as a structural fix to the incentive problem entrenched in private markets.
He put this in historical context, saying that preferred capital had similarities to 19th-century American railroads, where it accounted for 20 to 30% of the institution’s capital before it became obsolete. Saylor said Strategy has reinvented the model for the 21st century, built on Bitcoin instead of railroads.
STRC’s net worth is $8.5 Billion
The numbers he performed on the Nakamoto Stage were the center of attention. STRC reached nearly $8.5 billion in net value in nine months, a figure that would itself make it larger than the entire existing monthly preferred securities market combined.
He put the annual growth of the program at about 350%, he said that the entry of April alone, if done annually, points to $ 38 billion a year, and he described the product as sitting in “hypergrowth” with no clear end. Liquidity, he said, has grown eightfold in five months.
“This is going well,” he told the audience.
Saylor: STRC is accessible
Part of what’s driving that pace, Saylor says, is affordability. STRC trades on Nasdaq and is available to any retail investor, while most comparable structured credit products are confined to private funds or limited to institutional buyers.
He said that about 80% of the owners of STRC are shops, but the economy of companies and institutions are starting to follow. Strategy’s own data shows that STRC has funded the acquisition of about 77,000 BTC in the year 2026, which is ten times more than the total inflow of all US Bitcoin ETFs combined during the same period.
The tax structure was another selling point. STRC shares receive capital return treatment, which means investors can reinvest income without paying ordinary income tax on gross distributions, allowing returns to compound over time.
Saylor closed with an idea that was bigger than a single product. He said that there is a “great thirst in the crypto economy to produce Bitcoin-backed products” and that the opportunity is for 1,000 companies to build their digital currency and production tools on the same framework.
“Every dollar that goes into digital debt will go into digital money,” he said. “It will flow through the Bitcoin network. As it flows through the Bitcoin network, the price will go up.”
“We expect digital credit to drive the size of the bitcoin network … drive bitcoin to 10M coins, make bitcoin a 2T dollar network and grow higher, and give people an alternative to the 20th century credit tools,” Saylor said.
He described the organization as a “massive, intergenerational wealth transfer” and said his ultimate goal is for the Strategy model to “empower millions of households with a high-yield savings account.”
