Strategy’s STRC preferred stock has remained below its $100 stated value at $95.31 despite Bitcoin’s rally to about $77,125, prompting Multicoin Capital co-founder Tushar Jain to argue that its 12% dividend does not adequately cover the risk of another deep drawdown.

Tushar Jain said in an Aug. 22 X thread that STRC had failed to return to its stated value during Bitcoin’s recent rally because its dividend remained too low relative to the losses investors had faced.

“STRC has not repegged despite this monster BTC rally because the dividend is way too low,” Jain wrote.

The Multicoin Capital co-founder said Strategy had marketed STRC as a fixed-income product, yet the security suffered a drawdown of about 30%. According to Jain, investors who accept that degree of downside exposure require a much higher yield as compensation.

STRC closed at $95.31 on Aug. 21, according to Strategy’s website, leaving it 4.69% below its $100 stated amount. The share price has recovered sharply from its June low of $71.25, but the rebound has not restored the level Strategy wants the security to maintain.

Bitcoin, meanwhile, traded near $77,125 on Aug. 22 after reaching an intraday high of $78,763. The cryptocurrency had climbed above Strategy’s average acquisition cost of $75,385, returning the company’s treasury to an unrealized profit at prevailing prices.

Why STRC’s 12% dividend has not restored its price

Strategy currently pays a 12% annualized dividend on STRC’s $100 stated value, split into two monthly payments of $0.50 per share. At the Aug. 21 market price, the $12 annual payout produced an effective yield of about 12.6%.

In its Aug. 2 coverage, crypto.news reported the unchanged rate after STRC ended July at $89.46. The security had spent much of the month well below $100, even after Strategy raised its annualized dividend from 11.5% to 12% for record dates beginning in July.

Strategy’s rate-setting framework allows management to consider STRC’s trading price, competing market yields, credit spreads, Bitcoin’s price and volatility, reserve coverage, capital-market conditions and the company’s complete capital structure. Dividend payments require board approval and are not guaranteed.

Management previously used a more direct framework in which a monthly volume-weighted average price below $95 could lead to a recommended increase of at least 50 basis points. Strategy revised the policy in June, meaning a below-par price no longer produces an automatic increase.

On July 27, the company said management would recommend holding the rate at 12% until STRC recorded sustained trading near $100. Strategy also said it would not issue additional STRC shares below the stated amount, limiting the security’s role in raising fresh capital while it trades at a discount.

Jain argued that raising the rate would create another problem for Strategy because a larger payout would increase its recurring cash needs.

“If Saylor raises the dividend for STRC to get it to repeg, he raises his annual cash burn substantially.”

STRC’s price controls one route to more Bitcoin

Strategy introduced STRC in July 2025 through an initial public offering of more than 28 million shares priced at $90 each. The security began with a 9% annualized dividend, which the company later increased several times as the market price moved below its $100 stated value.

STRC sits above MSTR common stock in Strategy’s capital structure but below the company’s debt. It is perpetual, lacks a fixed maturity date, and does not give holders a contractual right to redeem their shares for $100 on demand.

The company designed the variable dividend to encourage STRC to trade close to its stated value. When the security trades at or above $100, Strategy can sell additional shares without issuing them at a discount and use the proceeds for purposes that may include Bitcoin purchases.

Chief Executive Phong Le connected the two transactions in July, saying Strategy would issue more STRC and buy more Bitcoin after the preferred stock returned to par. The STRC issuance condition makes its market price relevant to the company’s ability to expand its Bitcoin holdings through preferred-share sales.

Jain said failure to restore STRC to $100 would prevent Strategy from buying more Bitcoin through accretive STRC issuance. He also argued that MSTR could trade at a discount similar to a closed-end fund if the company stopped making accretive Bitcoin purchases.

Strategy describes STRC issuance as accretive when the transaction increases the Bitcoin or net Bitcoin attributed to each assumed diluted MSTR share. The company cautions that its Bitcoin-per-share metrics are not measures of shareholder returns, liquidity or conventional investment yield.

Strategy has used buybacks instead of another rate increase

Rather than raising the dividend again in August, Strategy has repurchased STRC shares below $100. The company bought back 288,930 shares for about $25 million during the week ending July 26, paying an average of $86.53 per share.

Further transactions followed as Strategy sold parts of its Bitcoin reserve. Between July 27 and Aug. 2, the company sold 1,638 BTC for $104.7 million, directing $52.4 million to preferred-stock dividends and $52.3 million to STRC repurchases.

During the following week, Strategy sold another 1,690 BTC for $108.6 million and used the entire net amount to buy back about 1.15 million STRC shares. An Aug. 10 report on the transaction showed that the company paid an average of approximately $94.29 per share.

Strategy then raised $333.7 million by selling 3.46 million MSTR shares from Aug. 10 through Aug. 16. Its SEC filing showed that $132.2 million funded the repurchase of about 1.39 million STRC shares, while $52.4 million covered STRC dividends and $149.1 million went into the company’s U.S. dollar reserve.

The transactions increased the reserve to approximately $4.80 billion and kept Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings unchanged at 840,447 BTC for the week. Those coins were acquired for about $63.36 billion, including fees, at an average price of $75,385.

MSTR’s Bitcoin premium faces renewed scrutiny

In the last post of his thread, Jain said the MSTR-to-Bitcoin chart had “fully retraced” and argued that the digital-asset treasury trade had run its course. His statement was an opinion about Strategy’s valuation rather than company guidance or a confirmed market outcome.

MSTR closed at $119.25 on Aug. 21 after rising 6.05% during the session, while Strategy’s website placed its modified net asset value ratio near 1.00. The company warns that its mNAV measure is not the same as net asset value under traditional accounting standards and may not predict the price of its securities.

For U.S. investors, both STRC and MSTR trade on Nasdaq, making the dispute relevant to holders using listed Strategy securities for Bitcoin-related exposure. STRC holders receive cash distributions but do not own a direct claim on a fixed quantity of Bitcoin, while MSTR investors remain exposed to the company’s operating costs, preferred-stock obligations, debt and potential share dilution.

Strategy’s Aug. 17 Form 8-K reported no Bitcoin purchases or sales between Aug. 10 and Aug. 16. The filing left its holdings at 840,447 BTC after two consecutive weeks of sales and disclosed $4.80 billion in U.S. dollar reserves.

MANTRA Chain has resumed block production after deploying version 8.4.0 to fix a Cosmos-EVM vulnerability that kept its mainnet unable to process transactions for about 30 hours.

MANTRA Chain said in an Aug. 22 post that its mainnet was producing blocks again after developers fixed the vulnerability found in its Cosmos-EVM module.

The restart followed a coordinated software update involving MANTRA-operated validators and other members of the network’s validator set. According to the project’s incident status page, block production resumed at about 5:30 a.m. UTC on Aug. 22 through the patched v8.4.0 release.

User balances were not changed during the incident, while the restart involved no blockchain rollback or alteration of the network state, the status update said. Token holders were also told that they did not need to take any action.

MANTRA Chain halted after an attacker targeted its EVM module

The incident began late on Aug. 20, when MANTRA detected an attacker exploiting a vulnerability in an upstream software dependency used by the blockchain. Developers responded by halting the mainnet, preventing transactions from being processed while security teams investigated the activity.

MANTRA’s initial notice said all transactions and network endpoints had been frozen. The shutdown also stopped transfers, staking operations, bridges and MANTRA-managed inter-blockchain communication relays, while some exchanges paused deposits and withdrawals connected to the network.

As crypto.news reported on Aug. 21, the halt took validators, public endpoints and bridge services offline, leaving assets temporarily unable to move on the RWA-focused Layer 1.

Later in the investigation, MANTRA traced the vulnerability to its Cosmos-EVM module and said the activity affected two wallet addresses before developers contained the threat. Its status page subsequently identified them as MANTRA-managed wallets and said there was no indication that user, exchange, or partner funds had been directly affected.

“No user funds were exploited,” the project said in an update after identifying the source of the incident.

MANTRA has not disclosed what activity occurred in the two managed wallets, how much value was involved, or whether any assets left the addresses. The project also has not released the attack path or named the specific upstream software component responsible for the vulnerability.

Before beginning the restart process, the team took a complete snapshot of the blockchain at the halted state. Mainnet remained stopped at block 17,449,398 while developers reviewed known attack paths and prepared the patch.

Version 8.4.0 enabled the coordinated restart

Following the initial investigation, developers built v8.4.0 to repair the vulnerability in the EVM module and add supplementary security protections. MANTRA first tested the release on its DuKong testnet before validating it in an internal environment that replicated the mainnet state.

Repeated upgrade rehearsals were completed before validators received the signal to restart. According to the incident page, the software update did not require module changes, state migrations, or changes to the blockchain’s stored data.

MANTRA-operated validators were upgraded first, followed by validator partners, ordinary node operators, RPC services, and archive nodes. The team said it chose a coordinated restart because bringing back only part of the validator set could have created operational problems.

Block production returned roughly 30 hours after the last reported block was processed at about 11:13 p.m. UTC on Aug. 20. Public RPC and EVM endpoints later became operational, although the project warned that explorers, indexers and other services could lag while processing data created after the restart.

DuKong remained offline after the mainnet returned. MANTRA said work to restore the public testnet would continue over the next several days as engineers monitored mainnet stability.

The affected Cosmos-EVM component forms part of MANTRA’s system for running Ethereum-compatible smart contracts. In September 2025, the chain added EVM support alongside CosmWasm, allowing developers to deploy applications using either environment on the RWA-focused network.

Earlier Cosmos EVM flaw remains unconfirmed as the cause

The incident has drawn attention to a separate critical vulnerability disclosed by Cosmos Labs in March 2026. Security advisory ASA-2026-002 described an error in the ICS20 precompile, a component that allows EVM smart contracts to initiate cross-chain token transfers through the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol.

According to the Cosmos EVM advisory, incorrect state handling during nested EVM execution could allow the same token balance to be used repeatedly within one transaction. The flaw led to an estimated $7 million loss on Saga EVM in January.

Cosmos Labs identified 15 chains running code containing the flaw. Six did not have the affected feature enabled, one was exploited, and the remaining networks applied a mitigation before an attack occurred, according to the advisory.

MANTRA was named among the teams that helped investigate and address the earlier issue. Cosmos Labs said the permanent repair was included in Cosmos EVM version 0.6.0 and that known affected chains had either upgraded or disabled the vulnerable component.

Neither MANTRA nor Cosmos Labs has said the Aug. 20 incident used the same ICS20 flaw. Until MANTRA publishes its technical report, attributing the latest exploit to that previously disclosed vulnerability would go beyond the available evidence.

MANTRA price hit a record low before the halt

During the hours surrounding the incident, the MANTRA token fell from approximately $0.005060 to a record low of $0.004126, a decline of about 18.5%. CoinGecko data cited in market reports placed the low at roughly 11:10 p.m. UTC on Aug. 20, minutes before the network’s last reported block.

Trading volume rose nearly 600% to approximately $24 million during the initial market reaction. MANTRA has not said the token selloff was related to the attack, leaving any link between the price movement and the incident unconfirmed.

Earlier in March, the token had risen 62% after MANTRA completed a rebrand, network upgrade, and 1:4 non-dilutive token split. Under the change, holders received four MANTRA tokens for every former OM token without altering the total value of their holdings at the conversion point, according to March market coverage.

For U.S. token holders using MANTRA’s native network, the chain halt prevented the same on-chain transactions, staking, and transfers that were unavailable in other regions. The project did not identify a separate impact on American users, and its confirmation that user balances remained unchanged applied to token holders generally.

MANTRA’s network focuses on tokenized real-world assets and is tied to several institutional projects. In June, Inveniam Capital Partners announced an agreement to acquire MANTRA and its affiliated entities after making a $20 million strategic investment in the company in August 2025, as detailed in the acquisition announcement.

The companies had also worked on NVNM Chain, a Layer 2 network built on MANTRA Chain for private-market asset data. MANTRA said a complete post-incident analysis covering the Cosmos-EVM vulnerability and the network’s response will be released in the coming days.

The Sandbox has contained a cross-chain bridge vulnerability that allowed an attacker to mint unbacked SAND on Base and BNB Smart Chain, with the project estimating the direct impact at less than 0.01% of the token’s 3 billion supply.

The Sandbox said it had fully contained the vulnerability affecting its SAND bridge on Base and BNB Smart Chain, adding that no user wallets were compromised and SAND held on Ethereum and Polygon remained secure.

In an August 22 statement, the metaverse project said the attacker created tokens on Base and BNB Smart Chain without the SAND needed to back them on Ethereum. The team disabled bridging to and from both networks, isolating the affected tokens and preventing them from being redeemed through the official bridge.

“All bridged SAND funds are backed by SAND locked on Ethereum, which remains entirely secure,” the project said.

Users were told not to buy, sell, or provide liquidity for SAND on Base or BNB Smart Chain while the affected deployments remain isolated. The team is also taking a snapshot from before the attack and said eligible liquidity providers would receive compensation, although it did not give a payment schedule.

How the SAND bridge exploit created unbacked tokens

Early on-chain alerts showed more than 500 million SAND minted on Base, but the reported figure climbed rapidly as the attacker continued interacting with the contract.

PeckShield later identified about 14.9 billion SAND created across two addresses. Other security researchers recorded hundreds of additional transactions, producing much larger estimates for the total number of unbacked tokens generated before the bridge was disabled.