Anchorage Digital snaps up STRC as short bets pile into Saylor’s Bitcoin vehicle
Anchorage Digital has taken a strategic position in Strategy’s perpetual preferred shares, STRC, just as the company has become the single most shorted large‑cap stock in the United States. The move injects an influential institutional supporter into Michael Saylor’s aggressively Bitcoin‑focused treasury vehicle at a moment when Wall Street is increasingly positioning against it.
Anchorage steps in as institutional backer
In a post on X on Wednesday, Anchorage co‑founder and CEO Nathan McCauley revealed that the crypto bank now holds Strategy’s STRC securities on its own balance sheet. While Anchorage did not disclose the size or timing of the purchase, the signal was clear: one of the most prominent regulated crypto banks is aligning itself financially with Saylor’s high‑conviction Bitcoin play.
McCauley framed the move as more than a routine portfolio allocation, emphasizing strategic alignment between two firms that see Bitcoin both as infrastructure and as a core corporate treasury asset. According to him, institutions that are serious about Bitcoin don’t just incorporate it into their talking points – they build structures and deploy capital around it.
“When the company that operationalizes Bitcoin infrastructure puts capital alongside the company that operationalized the Bitcoin treasury strategy… that’s a signal,” McCauley wrote, underscoring that Anchorage views STRC as part of a broader institutional architecture around BTC.
What is STRC and how does it work?
STRC is a Nasdaq‑listed perpetual preferred security issued by Strategy. It is marketed as a short‑duration, high‑yield instrument, appealing primarily to investors seeking regular income in a low‑rate or volatile environment.
Key features of STRC include:
– Perpetual preferred structure: The security has no fixed maturity date, effectively functioning as long‑term capital for Strategy.
– High coupon: STRC pays an annual dividend of 11.25%, distributed to investors monthly in cash.
– Capital deployment into Bitcoin: Funds raised via STRC have historically been funneled into further Bitcoin accumulation, reinforcing Strategy’s role as a quasi‑Bitcoin ETF with embedded leverage.
For income‑focused investors, STRC offers yield significantly above traditional bonds or many corporate preferreds, but it also concentrates risk in a business model deeply tied to Bitcoin’s price, volatility, and regulatory environment.
Strategy becomes Wall Street’s most‑shorted large‑cap
Even as Anchorage is buying, hedge funds and other traders are increasingly betting against Strategy. According to data compiled by Goldman Sachs, the company has climbed to the very top of the list of most‑shorted large‑cap US equities when measured by short interest as a share of market capitalization.
One year ago, Strategy did not even appear in the top 50 names on that list. Its ascent began in late 2025, when the company’s share price started to weaken despite Bitcoin still rallying toward its eventual peak in October. That divergence drew attention from short sellers who view the stock as both richly valued and structurally exposed to downside in BTC.
Short selling works by borrowing shares, selling them on the open market, and hoping to buy them back later at a lower price. If the stock falls, the short seller pockets the difference; if it rises, losses can, in theory, be unlimited, since there is no cap on how high a stock’s price can go. Strategy’s combination of high volatility, heavy leverage, and extreme sentiment makes it an especially attractive – and risky – vehicle for this kind of speculative positioning.
Strategy as a leveraged Bitcoin proxy
At its core, Strategy operates as a leveraged, publicly traded proxy for Bitcoin. The company issues various forms of securities – including convertible bonds and preferred instruments like STRC – and channels the proceeds into purchasing BTC for its balance sheet.
This structure creates a form of financial leverage on top of Bitcoin’s already volatile price dynamics:
– Upside amplification: In bull markets, when BTC rallies, Strategy’s equity can outperform Bitcoin itself because the company controls more BTC than its equity capitalization alone would normally justify, thanks to debt and preferred financing.
– Downside magnification: In downturns, the same leverage works in reverse. Falling BTC prices not only reduce the value of the underlying asset base but also compress the cushion against debt and other obligations, intensifying pressure on the share price.
For some investors, this leverage is the main attraction, functioning as a turbocharged BTC exposure with the convenience of a stock listing. For others, particularly risk‑averse funds, it is precisely why the stock deserves to be heavily shorted.
The size of Strategy’s Bitcoin war chest
Despite the growing chorus of skeptics, Strategy continues to execute on its accumulation plan. The company currently holds 717,722 BTC, valued at roughly $46.68 billion at prevailing market prices.
On Monday, Strategy disclosed yet another addition to its reserves:
– Purchase size: 592 BTC
– Total cost: $39.8 million
– Average purchase price: around $76,020 per Bitcoin
With Bitcoin trading near $66,000, those latest buys – along with earlier higher‑priced acquisitions – leave Strategy sitting on an estimated unrealized loss of about $7 billion. For critics, this loss is evidence of reckless timing and overconfidence; for supporters, it is a temporary mark‑to‑market setback within a long‑term accumulation strategy based on the belief that BTC will ultimately trade far higher.
Planned debt‑to‑equity shift: $6 billion in convertible bonds
In an effort to reshape its balance sheet and reduce financial risk, Strategy founder Michael Saylor recently announced plans to convert approximately $6 billion of convertible bond debt into equity.
The move would:
– Reduce leverage: By turning bondholders into shareholders, the company lessens its fixed repayment obligations and interest burden.
– Strengthen the balance sheet: Lower debt relative to assets could make Strategy more resilient to extended BTC downturns.
– Dilute existing investors: Current shareholders would see their ownership stakes reduced as new equity is issued to former bondholders.
This is a classic trade‑off: a safer capital structure at the cost of per‑share upside. In practice, the maneuver signals that management is willing to sacrifice some of the equity’s embedded leverage to ensure the company can endure even severe Bitcoin bear markets.
How low would Bitcoin need to go for Strategy to break?
Strategy has repeatedly argued that its balance sheet is robust enough to weather extreme volatility. According to its own estimates, Bitcoin would need to crash to around $8,000 – an approximate 88% drop from current levels – for the value of its BTC holdings to fall to parity with its outstanding debt.
In other words, management contends that there is a significant buffer between today’s conditions and a genuine solvency threat. This assertion is central to the bull thesis: as long as Bitcoin remains well above that threshold, Strategy can service its obligations and continue accumulating.
Skeptics counter that such stress tests may not fully capture liquidity risk, market sentiment, or the impact of a prolonged crypto winter combined with tightening financial conditions. Short sellers are effectively betting that a combination of a BTC downturn, investor fatigue, and dilution will drag the stock significantly lower, even if the company remains technically solvent.
Why Anchorage’s move matters
Anchorage’s decision to hold STRC is important for several reasons:
1. Validation of the model: An institution with a front‑row seat to crypto infrastructure is choosing to back a high‑yield instrument tied to a Bitcoin‑maximalist treasury strategy, suggesting that Strategy’s approach still resonates with parts of the institutional market.
2. Counterweight to short sellers: While Anchorage alone cannot offset the full weight of Wall Street’s bearish positioning, its presence introduces a well‑capitalized, long‑term holder on the other side of the trade.
3. Signal to corporate treasuries: Anchorage specializes in custody and infrastructure for digital assets. Its support hints that using Bitcoin as a core treasury reserve – once seen as an outlier strategy – may slowly be moving toward greater institutional acceptance, at least among crypto‑native firms.
4. Demand for high‑yield crypto‑linked products: By adding STRC to its balance sheet, Anchorage underscores that there is still appetite for structured, income‑producing instruments tied to BTC exposure, beyond spot holdings and ETFs.
Why is Strategy so heavily shorted? Key drivers behind the bearish bets
The surge in short interest around Strategy can be traced to several intertwined factors:
– Valuation concerns: When a company’s value is tightly tethered to a single volatile asset, any perception of overvaluation relative to that asset can trigger short selling. If the stock trades at a large premium to its underlying BTC holdings on a per‑share basis, it becomes a tempting target.
– Leverage risk: Short sellers are attracted to structures where debt and preferred capital amplify losses if asset prices fall. Strategy’s combination of convertible bonds, preferreds like STRC, and constant BTC buying makes it a textbook leveraged bet on a speculative asset.
– Crowded macro narrative: Many hedge funds are skeptical of long‑duration, high‑growth, or speculative assets in environments of rising rates or tightening liquidity. Strategy embodies several of those traits at once, making it an ideal proxy for expressing a broader bearish view on crypto‑related risk.
– Event‑driven catalysts: Announcements of new debt issuance, large BTC purchases near cycle peaks, or equity‑dilutive restructurings can all act as catalysts for additional short positioning, especially when they seem to increase downside risk in a downturn.
What this means for different types of investors
The tug‑of‑war between Anchorage’s backing and mounting short interest highlights the polarized nature of Strategy as an investment:
– For long‑term Bitcoin believers: Strategy offers leveraged exposure to BTC with a management team fully committed to maximizing coin holdings. Support from an institution like Anchorage may reinforce confidence that the model remains viable.
– For income‑seeking investors: Instruments like STRC provide double‑digit yield, but that yield is tightly connected to a single, high‑volatility underlying asset. The risk/return profile is far more extreme than traditional corporate or government bonds.
– For speculative traders: Strategy is a fertile ground for both long and short trades, with abundant liquidity, high volatility, and clear narrative catalysts. Short squeezes are possible if BTC rallies sharply and heavily shorted positions rush to cover, while steep drawdowns can occur if Bitcoin stumbles and leverage bites.
– For risk‑averse institutions: The company remains a niche exposure. While Anchorage’s move may encourage some to take a closer look, Strategy’s fortunes are still overwhelmingly determined by Bitcoin’s trajectory and market psychology around crypto assets.
Strategic outlook: convergence of corporate Bitcoin strategies
The Anchorage-Strategy connection also illustrates a broader trend: the maturing interplay between Bitcoin infrastructure providers and corporate holders of BTC. On one side are regulated custodians, banks, and service providers building rails for institutional adoption. On the other are companies like Strategy that use those rails to embed Bitcoin into their capital allocation and financing strategies.
If more corporates adopt BTC as a treasury reserve over the coming years, structures similar to STRC – blending yield, perpetual capital, and Bitcoin‑backed deployment – could proliferate. In that scenario, Anchorage’s investment may be remembered less as a contrarian bet and more as an early alignment with a new hybrid asset‑financing model.
For now, though, Strategy sits at the center of a high‑stakes confrontation between believers in a leveraged Bitcoin future and skeptics who view the company as overextended and vulnerable. Anchorage’s purchase of STRC adds a new, influential player to that battlefield – but it does not resolve the underlying debate about whether Saylor’s Bitcoin‑maximalist approach will ultimately be vindicated or punished by the market.