At this point, most people have at least heard of MicroStrategy… or “Strategy” now. It’s basically become Michael Saylor’s giant Bitcoin holding company. But something a lot of people still don’t realize is that Strategy isn’t just one stock anymore. It’s SIX different securities. And honestly, it’s getting confusing fast.
You’ve got MSTR, STRK, STRF, STRD, STRC, and even STRE over in Europe. Some pay dividends. Some don’t. Some are safer. Some are way riskier. One pays monthly. One converts into MSTR shares. Another is basically designed to stay around $100 forever.
I’ll break them all down in plain English. But first, a quick word from my channel partner, iTrustCapital:
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Let’s start with the main one everyone knows: MSTR.
This is the regular common stock. When people say “I’m buying MicroStrategy,” this is usually what they mean. Owning MSTR basically means you own a piece of a company whose main strategy is buying and holding as much Bitcoin as possible.
The idea is simple: if Bitcoin goes up, MSTR probably goes up too… usually even more aggressively. But the flip side is also true. When Bitcoin gets crushed, MSTR usually falls even harder. I treat MSTR as a leveraged Bitcoin bet.
There’s also no dividend here. No monthly income. No cash payments. This is the pure upside play. High risk, high reward.
Then you’ve got the preferred shares, which are a completely different type of investment.
Think of preferred shares less like owning a business and more like owning a fancy IOU from the company. In exchange for giving up some upside, you usually get regular cash payments and a better position if things ever go wrong.
The first one Strategy launched was STRK, also called “Strike.”
This one pays an 8% dividend, but what makes it interesting is that it’s convertible into MSTR shares. So you kind of get both worlds. You collect income while also keeping some exposure to the upside if MSTR absolutely explodes higher in the future.
Then there’s STRF, or “Strife,” which is basically the boring income-focused version.
It pays a flat 10% dividend and sits near the front of the line if the company ever ran into trouble financially. No conversion feature. No crazy upside. Just steady yield. This is more the type of thing pension funds and income investors would look at.
STRD is where things start getting riskier.
It also pays around 10%, but unlike STRF, the dividends are non-cumulative. That basically means if Strategy skips a payment, you don’t get it later. It’s just gone. STRD also sits much lower in the capital stack, meaning it’s riskier overall.
But because of that extra risk, the yield can end up much higher depending on the price you buy it at. Some investors like that tradeoff if they’re really bullish on Bitcoin long term.
And then there’s the one everybody seems obsessed with lately: STRC.
This is probably the weirdest and most innovative one of the bunch.
STRC pays a floating dividend that changes over time, and right now it’s sitting around 11.5% annually, paid monthly in cash. The whole structure is basically engineered to keep the share price hovering around $100.
If the price drops too much, Strategy raises the yield to attract buyers. If the price climbs too high, they can lower it. It almost behaves more like a high-yield savings product or short-term bond fund than a normal stock.
That’s why it’s gotten so much attention recently. Monthly cash flow, relatively stable price action, and a double-digit yield sounds incredibly attractive in this environment.
Of course, a lot of people hear “11.5% monthly income tied to Bitcoin” and immediately think it sounds too good to be true. And honestly, I understand why. I actually tackled STRC in way more detail in this video where I dig into the “too good to be true” nature of it:
At the end of the day, though, every single one of these securities is really just a different way of betting on the same thing: Bitcoin.
MSTR is the high-volatility upside play.
STRF is the safer income play.
STRD is the higher-risk, higher-yield play.
STRK sits somewhere in the middle with both income and upside potential.
STRC is the newer monthly-income-focused structure trying to stay stable around $100.
And STRE is basically the European version of STRF.
Different flavors. Same underlying thesis.
If Bitcoin continues growing long-term, these products probably continue working. If Bitcoin enters a brutal multi-year bear market, all of them eventually feel that pressure too. Some just absorb it differently than others.
I’m simplifying the risk AND all the details for each of these stocks for brevity's sake here in the newsletter. If you want a deeper dive, I cover all this (and more) in far more detail in this video:
