Strive buys US$94.5M in bitcoin as SATA preferred shares rise

An extra 1,107 bitcoin entered a listed treasury during a week when its preferred shares outstanding also rose by more than one million. Strive, Inc. NASDAQASST, a Dallas structured finance company and institutional asset manager, reported in its Sept. 28 SEC filing that it held 27,462 BTC on Sept. 25. The filing lists 26,355 BTC at Sept. 18. It bought the coins from Sept. 21 through Sept. 25 at an average US$85,396 each, including fees and expenses.

Strive common shares closed at US$29.00 on Monday, according to its NASDAQASST page at 4:00:01 p.m. EDT on Nasdaq. The same NASDAQASST page showed a 1.49 per cent decline at 4:00:01 p.m. EDT on Monday. Its perpetual preferred stock NASDAQSATA closed at US$100.01 on Monday, up 0.05 per cent, according to its NASDAQSATA page at 4:00 p.m. EDT.

Strive chief executive Matt Cole said in a Sept. 28 post that the bitcoin cost about US$94.5 million. He said warrant exercises generated another US$12.4 million and that SATA supplied 85 per cent of total capital raised when those proceeds were included. The company's 8-K lists changes in balances and share counts, but it does not trace each dollar raised to a particular bitcoin purchase.

The filing puts SATA preferred shares outstanding at 12,193,180 on Sept. 25, compared with 11,184,160 on Sept. 18. Effective common shares also rose by 649,072 to 97,651,721 over that interval. Those are the dated starting balances against which the Sept. 30 quarter-end can be compared once Strive reports another update.

Preferred Stock Count Reached 12.19 Million

The Sept. 25 SATA tally was 1,009,020 shares larger than its Sept. 18 level, or about nine per cent. Strive listed 88,453,685 Class A common shares at Sept. 25, against 87,804,613 at Sept. 18. Its Class B line remained at 9,198,036 shares. The outstanding-share table does not provide enough transaction detail to calculate cash raised from those changes.

Strive also reported US$248.8 million of cash and cash equivalents on Sept. 25, up US$19.2 million from Sept. 18. The cash increase occurred during the same interval as the bitcoin purchase, but the 8-K does not reconcile all receipts and payments for that week. Cole's warrant-proceeds and SATA percentages are therefore a separate account of capital raised, rather than figures derived from that cash balance.

A March 11 company release described SATA as variable-rate perpetual preferred stock and said Strive then held about 13,311 BTC. It listed 4,275,118 SATA shares outstanding as of March 9. The Sept. 25 holdings are more than double that earlier bitcoin count, while the preferred share base has also expanded; the two snapshots alone do not show how every intervening purchase was funded.

Bitcoin Outpaced Common Share Issuance

The Sept. 28 filing defines effective common shares as Class A plus Class B shares. For every 1,000 effective common shares, the reported holdings work out to about 0.2717 BTC on Sept. 18. The same calculation gives about 0.2812 BTC on Sept. 25, an improvement of about 3.5 per cent. Over the interval, the effective common share base expanded by about 0.7 per cent.

Strive's assumed fully diluted share count also grew, to 100,776,795 from 100,144,713 over the same week. Its definition excludes another pool of potential shares, which limits what the common-share calculation says about eventual ownership if all possible securities are converted.

"Assumed Fully Diluted Shares Outstanding represents Effective Common Shares Outstanding plus shares underlying all potentially dilutive securities, including options and unvested RSUs. Shares underlying Traditional Warrants are excluded from this figure," Strive said in the Sept. 28 filing.

The 8-K's traditional-warrant line records 25,349,806 underlying common shares at Sept. 25. It listed 25,810,455 at Sept. 18. Those warrants sit outside the company's assumed fully diluted count, while SATA preferred shares sit outside the effective common share denominator. Bitcoin per effective common share thus measures coins against existing common shares, without adjusting for outstanding preferred shares or treating unexercised warrants as shares.

Bitdeer Reported Sales During the Same Week

Bitdeer Technologies Group NASDAQBTDR, a bitcoin miner that publishes weekly production and sales figures, reported 288.4 BTC sold and 288.1 BTC produced for the week ended Sept. 25. Its Sept. 26 company post listed zero pure holdings, a measure that excludes customer deposits. Strive's filing, by comparison, reported a 1,107 BTC increase in its own holdings during the same reporting week.

Mugglehead's Sept. 26 report on Bitdeer's bitcoin sales followed how a miner's output and sales can leave its own holdings at zero. Cole's post describes capital raised through SATA and warrant exercises alongside Strive's purchase. Bitdeer's weekly post gives no proceeds or financing breakdown for its sales.

Read more: Bitdeer Technologies Group sells 288.4 BTC, has zero pure holdings

Sept. 30 is the next quarter-end for comparing Strive's holdings, cash and outstanding shares with the Sept. 25 figures in its 8-K. That filing gave no date for the next results release, so a later company disclosure will be needed to establish what changed after the purchase week.