Author: Zhou, ChainCatcher

Recently, Bitcoin has rebounded from about $62,000 all the way up to above $80,000, and Bitcoin treasury companies like Strive have also seen a significant surge: In the past four trading days, Strive has risen approximately 54%, Strategy is up approximately 32%, and smaller players like Twenty One Capital have also generally recorded double-digit rebounds.

In fact, by 2026, Bitcoin treasury companies have entered a significant differentiation phase. The largest player, Strategy, is no longer just buying and not selling; since the end of June this year, it has sold nearly 7,000 Bitcoins. Meanwhile, nearly 40% of the companies in this sector have seen their stock prices fall below net asset value, with many choosing to deleverage or pause large-scale acquisitions.

Against this backdrop, Strive has become one of the few public market players that continue to disclose purchases, holding a total of 21,356 Bitcoins.

The perpetual preferred stock SATA issued by the company has a 13% annualized dividend and is set to be adjusted in June 2026 to be the first daily dividend-paying public security in U.S. history.

Although the company is currently much smaller than Strategy, at this stage, Strive's buying pace and capital structure choices seem to give it more differentiated potential. Company CEO Matt Cole has publicly stated multiple times, repeatedly emphasizing a long-term belief in Bitcoin.

From Anti-ESG Fund to Bitcoin Treasury

Many people recognize Strive from the Bitcoin treasury label, but it initially had little to do with cryptocurrency.

In 2022, Vivek Ramaswamy and former Anheuser-Busch executive Anson Frericks co-founded Strive. The company initially relied on an Anti-ESG energy index fund called DRLL, focusing on an investment philosophy that does not consider environmental, social, and governance factors, quickly attracting capital that resonated with this value system.

In February 2023, Ramaswamy resigned as executive chairman to run for U.S. president. In April of the same year, Matt Cole took over as CEO, becoming the de facto helmsman of the company's strategy for the following years.

The real turning point occurred in 2025. By that time, Strategy's coin-holding model had already been largely reflected in its stock price. From May to September that year, Strive transformed itself into a public company focused on Bitcoin treasury strategies through a reverse merger with the Dallas-listed company Asset Entities. The deal also completed a $750 million PIPE financing, using the ticker symbol ASST, trading on Nasdaq.

After the transformation, Strive quickly began expanding. From September 2025 to January 2026, it acquired another Bitcoin treasury company, Semler Scientific, entirely in stock, integrating approximately 5,000 Bitcoins held by the latter into its balance sheet. At the completion of the acquisition, the merged company held about 12,798 Bitcoins, ranking 11th among global public companies in Bitcoin holdings.

Along with this acquisition, Strive also established its own management team. Avik Roy became Chief Strategy Officer, former chairman of Semler Scientific Eric Semler joined the board, and Joe Burnett took on the role of Vice President of Bitcoin Strategy, becoming another key voice for the company.

Market sentiment can also be seen through stock prices. In the early days after the transformation news broke, ASST was briefly pushed up to over $200, but later experienced reverse stock splits and valuation corrections, dropping all the way back to the current range of just over ten dollars.

As of August 21, the company held a total of 21,356 Bitcoins, along with 505,000 shares of Strategy STRC preferred stock, with a fair value of approximately $48.57 million, and about $171.9 million in cash.

Not Just Hoarding Coins, Strive's Product and Financing Design

Strive's financing tools are relatively conventional. First, it issues ordinary shares of ASST based on market price, known as an ATM. Second, it has perpetual preferred shares, SATA. In May of this year, it announced that it had completely repurchased all long-term notes, achieving zero debt, zero margin, and zero pledged Bitcoins.

The SATA preferred stock under the company is the first U.S. market public security to pay dividends daily, with a par value of $100 and an annualized dividend of 13%. Each trading day, it pays about $0.0516 per share, accumulating approximately $13 over a year of 252 trading days, exactly corresponding to the 13% coupon rate.

SATA dropped to about $75 in January and June this year, only three-quarters of its par value, but has since risen with Bitcoin back to par value.

As perpetual preferred stock, SATA, like Strategy's STRC, has no expiration date; dividends can be freely determined by the company or even deferred, and there are no hard clauses requiring forced redemption or liquidation if Bitcoin prices fall below a certain line. This year, Strive increased the limits of its ATM plans for ASST and SATA by $2.1 billion each.

During the first half of this year, as SATA fell sharply, Strive's increased holdings were interrupted for more than two months, until August when SATA returned to par value and the channel reopened, allowing it to resume Bitcoin purchases.

As a Bitcoin treasury company, the market inevitably compares it with Strategy, and the main differences between the two companies can be summarized in four points.

The first is the type of debt. Strategy accumulated a substantial amount of convertible bonds from 2020 to 2024, such as a $3 billion zero-coupon convertible bond issued in November 2024 maturing in 2029. In the past two years, Strategy has not continued to issue convertible bonds in large volumes but instead turned to buybacks to reduce debt. Strive, on the other hand, has no convertible bond debt; its Chief Investment Officer Ben Werkman stated that it had previously maintained operations during the bear market solely through equity financing, without issuing convertible bonds.

The second is the coin-holding model. While Strategy is deleveraging, repurchasing convertible bonds, and selling back STRC, this year it has already sold nearly 7,000 Bitcoins. Strive, however, is still expanding,issuing SATA, and buying Bitcoin.

The third is the difference in interest payments. STRC currently has an annualized yield of 12%, paying out every two weeks, at $0.50 per share. Strive's SATA pays dividends daily, with a coupon rate of 13%.

The fourth is cross-holdings. Strive has purchased approximately 505,000 shares of Strategy's STRC preferred stock, with a book value of about $48.6 million. That is, holding a competitor's preferred stock as interest-earning reserves while using the approximately 12% yield from STRC to support the dividends of its own SATA.

Narrative Shift and Management's Beliefs

The narrative around the Bitcoin treasury business is changing.

The core commitment of the past few years has been to buy but not sell, locking Bitcoin into the balance sheet and never using it. In 2026, this commitment was broken by the largest player, Strategy. Although the amount sold was less than 1% of its total holding of 840,000, the symbolic significance is considerable.

Strive is currently at an earlier stage of the cycle, not yet reaching the point of selling coins. Company CEO Cole repeatedly emphasizes a long-term belief in Bitcoin, citing reasons such as the structural weakness of the dollar, capital's pursuit of scarce assets in the age of AI, and Bitcoin leading in price comparison ahead of gold. He also pointed out that even if Bitcoin falls to 1 cent and stays there for 18 months, Strive would not need to sell even a single BTC.

Compared to this macro narrative, the internal conviction of team members betting their own money is a more significant signal.In a post, Cole stated that February 19 is the bear market bottom for ASST, at which time the company’s CFO, CLO, and several executives and directors bought stock in the open market, and three independent directors converted to full-time positions within six months, demonstrating high confidence in their Bitcoin exposure, leverage structure, and mutual cooperation.

However, aside from the team's confidence, there is a more practical question: how much Bitcoin have common stockholders truly received from such a high-profile buying approach?

Just looking at the pace of holdings might lead to overestimation. For example, from August 17 to 21, the company’s Bitcoin reserves increased by about 5.48%, but the funds used to buy Bitcoin mainly came from issuing new stocks. During this period, the common stock expanded from about 86.04 million shares to about 89.68 million shares, diluting by about 4.24%, while the SATA preferred stock, which is repaid ahead of common stock, also increased in scale.

Taking into account the dilution and the priority of the preferred stock, based on the CEBE metric, which determines how much Bitcoin value corresponds to each share of common stock, the actual growth for this week was only about 1.73%, rising from about 14,767 satoshis to 15,023 satoshis, showing that the actual numbers are not always as impressive as they appear on the surface.

How to Endure Downturns and Amplify Upsides?

In fact, Strive faces a common challenge across the entire treasury sector— the deceleration of flywheel in a bear market.

Strive's solution is digital credit. It treats Bitcoin as a credit asset that generates stable income, rather than merely betting on its appreciation.

Chief Investment Officer Burnett cites Saylor's algorithm, stating that if Bitcoin grows at an average annual rate of 3.3%, capital gains will be enough to cover preferred stock dividends, and holding Bitcoin itself becomes a business that can consistently pay interest, with SATA's daily payout being the product of this approach.

Cole believes that in order to maximize the expected total return of $ASST, the company should increase its participation in Bitcoin appreciation as much as possible within a responsible limit while maintaining strict capital discipline.

However, the true challenge lies in considering both bull and bear market scenarios. Downward, how much of a drop can it withstand; upward, if Bitcoin really rises, will it miss out on profits due to being too conservative.

During the downward movement of the bear market, the company has avoided hard liquidation by not using debt, not setting margins, and not adopting any financing structures that could trigger forced liquidation. However, its financing relies heavily on SATA and ASST trading above par or net asset value, as evidenced by SATA falling sharply to three-quarters of par value this year, leading to a two-month pause in buying, illustrating this dependency.

As for the upward direction, Cole refers to the capital structure of ASST as an amplification structure, relying on three mutually reinforcing mechanisms to increase the company’s participation in Bitcoin appreciation, enlarging the scarce asset pool, increasing the Bitcoin share, and further amplifying the structure of ASST.

Strive's smaller size and thinner liquidity indeed provide a higher elasticity and beta for Bitcoin exposure. This year, ASST has risen about 34%, while Strategy's MSTR has actually fallen about 19%; in terms of amplitude, ASST is about 111%, and MSTR about 76%.

Conclusion

Overall, Strive has made some differentiations from Strategy's model, being debt-free, offering daily dividends, and employing digital credit, which sounds safer and more innovative. However, peeling back these designs, it still fundamentally represents a high-volatility exposure to Bitcoin.

Moreover, this exposure is facing an increasing number of alternatives. With the advent of spot Bitcoin ETFs and various structured ETFs and Bitcoin products, investors now have many more avenues to gain Bitcoin exposure compared to the past, intensifying the competition for treasury companies.

For smaller companies like Strive, the limitations are even more apparent. With a small size and thin liquidity, it is difficult for large funds to move in and out, and the pool of investors able to participate is relatively restricted.

Its advantages are equally clear, providing high elasticity and high beta. For those willing to accept high volatility and looking specifically for this type of exposure, that is its allure.