STRC traded as low as $82.50. SATA fell from par into the low 90s. And Strive CEO Matt Cole wants you to know that none of it had anything to do with the actual creditworthiness of the issuers behind those instruments.

Cole took to X on June 19 to address the sharp sell-off in both preferred securities, attributing the damage to a leveraged liquidation event. In plain English: someone (or multiple someones) got margin called, triggering forced selling that cascaded through thinly traded instruments.

What happened and why it matters

STRC is the perpetual preferred stock issued by Strategy, the Michael Saylor-led company formerly known as MicroStrategy. It yields roughly 11.5%. SATA is Strive’s own perpetual preferred equity product, offering a variable yield of approximately 13%, with daily dividend payments that began in mid-June 2026. SATA launched more recently, debuting in November 2025, making it the younger and smaller sibling of the two.

Both instruments sit in what Cole has branded the “digital credit” market, a nascent asset class designed to give investors high-yield exposure to Bitcoin without the baggage of corporate debt entanglements.

Cole described June 19 as the most challenging day in the history of digital credit. When STRC drops from par to $82.50, that’s a roughly 17.5% decline in an instrument that’s supposed to behave more like a fixed-income product than a momentum trade. SATA’s fall into the low 90s was less severe but still notable for something paying daily dividends.

Strive’s liquidity position

Strive maintains an 18-month dividend reserve backed by both cash and STRC holdings. The company also purchased $50 million worth of STRC back in March 2026. Strive held approximately 13,311 BTC as of March 2026. Both Strive and Strategy maintain what Cole characterized as conservatively leveraged or debt-free balance sheets. The liquidation events, he emphasized, did not impair either company’s ability to meet their financial obligations.

What this means for investors in digital credit

A 13% variable yield on SATA and 11.5% on STRC are attractive numbers in any rate environment. Strive is sitting on 18 months of dividend reserves, and the underlying issuers characterize their balance sheets as conservatively leveraged or debt-free.

The risk is that these instruments become magnets for the exact kind of leverage that caused the problem in the first place. High-yield products attract yield chasers. Yield chasers use leverage. Leveraged positions get liquidated during drawdowns. The June 19 event will likely accelerate conversations around risk management practices for these products, particularly around how much leverage brokers and exchanges should permit on preferred securities tied to volatile underlying assets like Bitcoin.