Strategy shares fell below $100 on June 24 local time, slipping into double digits for the first time since March 2024. The stock is down more than 80 percent from a peak of about $474 hit last November.

Bitcoin Magazine reported that the break below $100 is being seen as more than the loss of a psychological support level. It is also taken as a signal that the company’s bitcoin-centred financial strategy is back on the market’s testing ground. Strategy, led by Michael Saylor (마이클 세일러), has built its investment approach on the premise that leveraged exposure to bitcoin can deliver higher returns than traditional assets.

Bitcoin is currently trading around $61,000, below Strategy’s average purchase price of about $75,656 per coin. The company holds 847,363 BTC, worth about $53 billion at current values. Total investment based on the average purchase price is about $64 billion, leaving it with unrealised valuation losses of more than $11 billion. The market views the gap as a key factor weighing on the common stock price.

The share decline accelerated alongside several measures taken over the past 6 weeks. In May, Strategy used cash-equivalent funds to redeem $1.5 billion of convertible bonds early at a discounted price. In the process, dividend defence capacity shrank from a targeted 24 months to about 6 months at one point.

The company sold 32 BTC on June 1. It was its first bitcoin sale since 2022. Strategy said the move was meant to show it could meet dividend obligations through asset sales if necessary, but the market took it negatively at the time and the stock fell almost 6 percent.

Its preferred share STRC is also under pressure. STRC fell to $83 in mid-June, well below its par value of $100. Strategy later increased the STRC dividend payment cycle to twice a month and rebuilt cash holdings to about $1.1 billion. Still, the market has not yet pushed STRC back to par.

Saylor said at a bitcoin conference that STRC had become one of the fastest-growing credit products in the world. He said STRC offered an 11.5 percent dividend while using bitcoin as underlying capital to draw in billions of dollars in private funds. He also argued that expanding bitcoin-collateralised digital credit products such as STRC could sharply increase bitcoin adoption and help drive future price gains.

Still, the company has not stopped buying bitcoin. Earlier, Strategy bought an additional 1,587 BTC in early June for $100 million, and on June 22 it spent $35 million to buy another 520 BTC. But continuing to buy at prices above current levels did little to restore confidence among common stock investors.

Strategy shares are currently at $98.83. Unless bitcoin recovers to the average purchase price, the likelihood is increasing that large valuation losses and funding-management burdens will continue to affect the stock and preferred share prices.