“Stay humble, stack sats.”
It’s probably the most repeated line in Bitcoin. Stay humble, accumulate satoshis, the smallest unit of bitcoin: one hundred millionth of a coin. A whole savings philosophy in four words.
Eight days ago Michael Saylor posted it on X. With one small detail: he put a dollar sign in front of SATS.
SATS 0.00%↑ is no longer a unit of bitcoin. It’s a ticker. And it isn’t Strategy’s. It belongs to a competitor.
Strive just priced SATS, its new preferred stock. Seven million shares at $90, upsized from the five million it first announced. $630 million gross. A fixed 15% annual dividend on a $100 stated amount, cumulative and perpetual. If you bought in the offering, you’re earning roughly 16.7% on what you paid. If the board declares it. Always if the board declares it.
SATS sits below SATA, Strive’s other preferred (variable dividend, currently 13%, designed to trade near $100), and above the common stock. It’s the layer that takes losses before SATA does. That’s why it pays more. The 15% isn’t generosity. It’s the price of subordination.
Strive was already doing something unusual: it holds around 505,000 shares of STRC, Strategy’s preferred, and uses them as part of the reserve backing its own dividends. A Bitcoin treasury that owns the credit of another Bitcoin treasury. If you’re not sure how STRC works or why it’s the centerpiece of all this, I took it apart piece by piece in Saylor’s Infinite Money Machine.
And now Saylor is promoting his rival’s product. A few weeks earlier he published an essay arguing that digital credit issuers make each other stronger: whoever convinces a fund manager that a Bitcoin-backed preferred belongs in the portfolio opens the door for everyone else.
The obvious question is the one nobody has confirmed yet.
What if Strategy starts buying SATS?
Let’s sketch it out. Strategy sells STRC to savers who want dollar income. With part of that money, it buys into a new SATS offering. Strive gets fresh cash and buys bitcoin. Strategy collects 15% from Strive and pays the STRC dividend to its own investors. Strive keeps collecting from STRC.