Scott Melker argues that Strategy’s Bitcoin buy machine has temporarily stalled because its preferred shares are trading below par, forcing the firm to rebuild cash and shut off the ATM. He frames the bigger story as Wall Street and crypto infrastructure rapidly converging: ICE/NYSE partnering with OKX on tokenized products, Franklin Templeton launching Bitcoin-linked dividend ETFs, Morgan Stanley slashing fees on crypto ETFs, and central banks/regulators moving in different directions on stablecoins. He closes by warning that DeFi/security exploits remain a persistent problem.
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Scott Melker’s core thesis is that the biggest market story is not geopolitics or the weekend noise, but the changing structure of crypto adoption and distribution. In the near term, he says Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin-buying engine at Strategy has “sputtered” because the company is rebuilding cash reserves and its preferred shares, especially STRC, are trading below par. That below-par pricing, in his telling, effectively shuts off the ATM mechanism that funds more Bitcoin purchases, leaving Strategy temporarily reliant on dilutive equity issuance if it wants to keep adding cash and BTC. He backs that with a recap of the prior week’s stress: Strategy bought only 520 BTC for about $34.9 million at an average of $67,068, while cash reserves rose to $1.4 billion after falling near $100 million, and the company had to address dividend-payment concerns on STRC. …
Near term, Strategy looks tactically constrained while its preferred shares stay below par, so BTC buying may remain choppy and headline-driven. The better immediate setup is around institutional crypto product news than around a clean Saylor-led accumulation story.
Over the next several weeks, the base case is that the market keeps rotating toward broader institutional distribution—tokenization, low-fee ETFs, and exchange partnerships—while Strategy’s funding model either normalizes or remains a drag. Confirmation would come from stronger BTC prices and a rebuilt cash buffer; invalidation would be continued weak preferred-share trading and shrinking buy sizes.
The structural thesis is that crypto is being absorbed into the core financial plumbing: exchanges, asset managers, and brokers will increasingly compete to package it. The long-run risk is that security flaws and regulatory fragmentation slow that adoption even as dollar stablecoins and tokenization deepen the system’s reliance on U.S.-linked rails.
Strategy (MicroStrategy) has temporarily lost its ability to buy Bitcoin because its preferred shares STRC are trading below par, shutting down its ATM share issuance.
STRC is trading below $100 par value which prevents the company from issuing new shares via the ATM to raise cash for Bitcoin purchases.
Franklin Templeton's new Bitcoin dividend reinvestment ETFs (DRIP) will be huge for crypto adoption given their $1.4 trillion AUM and aggressive product pipeline.
The DRIP structure redirects dividend income from the equity basket into Bitcoin purchases, targeting a 95% equities / 5% Bitcoin allocation at launch in September.
Morgan Stanley will offer the cheapest Ethereum and Solana ETF products in the market at 14 basis points, following the same playbook as their Bitcoin ETF.
Morgan Stanley undercut the market with 14 bps on Bitcoin and is extending that fee strategy to ETH and SOL ETFs, which Eric Balchunas called the cheapest offerings ever seen.
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