Michael Saylor, founder and CEO of Strategy, took to Nakamoto’s stage at Bitcoin 2026 on Tuesday to argue that the nine-month preferred stock instrument has become the world’s fastest-growing credit product — and that its expansion has only just begun.
The keynote, centered around what Saylor calls digital credit, was a structured presentation STRCthe strategy’s variable rate Series A extended preferred stock, which trades on the Nasdaq near its par value of $100 and pays an annualized monthly dividend of 11.5%.
He opened with a premise that set the tone for everything that followed: “The world is built on capital. The world is built on credit.”
For Saylor, Bitcoin is a layer of capital. It’s what he calls “ideal capital” — designed, digital, mobile, and historically superior to alternatives. He cited Bitcoin’s roughly 38% annualized return over the past five years versus gold, the S&P 500, and real estate, which he described without hesitation as “terrible.”
STRC, in his framework, is the credit layer built on top: it strips away Bitcoin volatility From the equation, he directs the excess return to holders of common stock, offering what he described as a “comfortable ride” for investors who want cash flow rather than price exposure.
The contrast he drew between digital credit and traditional private credit was one of the more pointed arguments in the talk. He said private credit is illiquid, opaque, disconnected, and burdened with fees — and structured primarily around what issuers want. Digital credit, by definition, is liquid, transparent, homogeneous, scalable, accessible, and fee-free credit.
“We have designed a digital tool that is useful to the investor,” he said, describing the STRC as a structural corrective to the incentive problem inherent in private markets.
He puts this in historical context, claiming that preferred capital had a parallel with American railroads in the nineteenth century, accounting for 20% to 30% of institutional financing before disappearing from use. The strategy reintroduces the model into the 21st century, built on bitcoin rather than railroad track, Saylor said.
STRC dominance valued at $8.5 billion
The numbers he presented on the Nakamoto stage were the center of gravity of the talk. The STRC reached about $8.5 billion in par value in nine months, a number that would by itself make it larger than the entire current world of monthly-paying preferred securities combined.
He estimated the program’s annual growth at about 350%, and said that inflows in April alone, when calculated annually, indicate about $38 billion annually, and described the product as being in a state of “hypergrowth” with no clear end in sight. He said liquidity increased eight-fold in five months.
“This is spreading very quickly,” he told the audience.
SAYLOR: STRC is accessible
Part of what drives this speed, in Saylor’s telling, is accessibility. STRC shares are traded on the Nasdaq and are available to any retail investor, while most comparable structured credit products are either held in private funds or limited to institutional buyers.
Nearly 80% of STRC holders said It is retailbut corporate and institutional coffers are beginning to follow. The strategy’s own data shows that STRC has funded the acquisition of nearly 77,000 bitcoins in 2026 so far, ten times the net inflow of all U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs combined over the same period.
The tax structure was another selling point. STRC dividends receive capital return treatment, meaning investors can reinvest the cash flows without paying ordinary income tax on the full distribution, allowing returns to compound over time.
Saylor concluded his work with a vision bigger than any single producer. He said there is a “huge thirst in the cryptocurrency economy to generate Bitcoin-backed yield” and that the opportunity exists for 1,000 companies to build their digital cash and yield instruments on the same framework.
“Every dollar that flows into digital credit will flow into digital capital,” he said. “It will flow into the Bitcoin network. As it flows into the Bitcoin network, the price will rise.”
“We expect digital credit to increase the size of the Bitcoin network… pushing Bitcoin to 10 million coins, making Bitcoin a $2 trillion network to grow even higher, and giving people an alternative to 20th century credit instruments,” Saylor said.
He described the movement as a “very powerful, multi-generational wealth transfer” and said his ultimate goal is for the strategy model to “provide hundreds of millions of households with high-yield savings accounts.”
