Crypto World
Strategy $12B underwater, STRC cracks: model breaking?
Strategy is roughly $12 billion underwater on its Bitcoin, its stock has fallen below its net asset value, and its STRC preferred shares have crashed to a record discount as a law firm opens a fraud probe. Michael Saylor says nothing is wrong. The machine that bought 847,000 Bitcoin is being tested like never before. Here is what is actually happening.
Summary
- Strategy holds 847,363 Bitcoin, the largest corporate stockpile in the world, bought at an average cost near $75,650, leaving the position roughly $12 billion underwater with Bitcoin below $60,000.
- MSTR stock has fallen below $100 for the first time in about two years, trading at a discount to the Bitcoin it owns, which breaks the premium that powered its fundraising model.
- The sharpest stress is in STRC, Strategy’s preferred stock designed to trade near $100, which crashed to a record low near $74 as dividend obligations quadrupled to $1.2 billion and cash coverage collapsed from over seven years to about 14 months.
- A law firm has opened a securities-fraud investigation into Strategy and Saylor, and analysts including CryptoQuant have urged the company to stop buying Bitcoin and rebuild cash.
- Saylor says Strategy’s Bitcoin and cash exceed its debt by roughly $48 billion and points to surviving a worse 2022; the debate is whether this is a temporary confidence shock or a structural flaw in the model.
For five years, Michael Saylor’s company had one move, and it worked beautifully: issue securities, buy Bitcoin, watch the stock rise, repeat.
Strategy, the firm formerly known as MicroStrategy, rode that flywheel to a stockpile of 847,363 Bitcoin, roughly 4% of all the Bitcoin that will ever exist and the largest corporate hoard on earth.
The mechanism depended on a simple condition: that Bitcoin kept climbing and that Strategy’s stock traded at a premium to the Bitcoin on its balance sheet, so the company could sell shares to buy more coins on favorable terms.
In June 2026 that condition broke.
Bitcoin slid below $60,000, dragging Strategy’s position roughly $12 billion below what it paid for its coins. Its stock, MSTR, fell under $100 for the first time in about two years and is now trading at a discount to the very Bitcoin it holds.
And the company’s preferred stock, a security called STRC that was engineered to sit near $100, crashed to a record low around $74.
On top of the financial squeeze, a law firm has opened a securities-fraud investigation into the company and Saylor himself.
The flywheel that defined a half-decade of relentless accumulation is, for the first time, visibly spinning in reverse.
The question this raises is the one now dividing the market: is Strategy facing a temporary loss of confidence that a Bitcoin recovery would erase, or is something structurally broken in the model itself?
The stakes are large, because Strategy controls about 4% of all Bitcoin, and any sign that its machine is failing reverberates across a market already fragile from the June sell-off.
This piece works through what is actually happening, without either the doom that some critics project or the serenity that Saylor performs.
It explains the three interlocking pieces that make up Strategy’s structure and why they are straining at once, the specific crisis in the STRC preferred stock, the fraud investigation and the criticism from analysts, Saylor’s defense and the case that the company is fine, the genuinely difficult choices the company now faces, and what would resolve the question in either direction.
The aim is a clear, grounded picture of a financial machine under its sharpest stress in years, and an honest assessment of whether it is bending or breaking.
The three legs of the machine
To understand why Strategy is under pressure, you have to understand how its structure works, because the strain comes from three interdependent pieces leaning on one another and weakening at the same time.
The first leg is Bitcoin itself, the reserve asset, which Strategy holds in enormous quantity and treats as a permanent store of value that only grows over time.
The crucial feature of Bitcoin for this purpose is also its limitation: it produces no income. It pays no dividend and no interest, so while it can sit on the balance sheet appreciating, it generates none of the cash the company needs to meet its obligations.
That gap between a non-yielding reserve asset and cash obligations is the hinge on which the whole structure turns.
The second leg is MSTR, the common stock, which functions as the engine.
When MSTR trades above the value of the Bitcoin behind it, at a premium, Strategy can sell shares to buy more Bitcoin, and the premium makes that buying accretive, adding more Bitcoin per share than it dilutes.
This is the mechanics of the reversal that now matters. The same flywheel that works in a bull market starts to drag when the premium disappears.
The engine works in reverse when the premium disappears: raising $500 million at $500 a share takes 1 million shares, while raising the same amount at $50 takes 10 million shares.
That is the same cash for 10 times the dilution, which erodes the very reason to hold MSTR.
The third leg is STRC, the credit leg, a preferred stock with a stated value of $100 that pays a cash dividend, recently yielding around 11.5%.
STRC works only as long as investors trust that the dividend will keep coming, and Strategy can raise the rate to attract buyers when the price slips.
Each leg holds up the others. Bitcoin is the collateral story that supports the stock, the stock is the engine that funds the buying, and the preferred is the credit instrument that raises cash.
When all three weaken at once, as they have, the question shifts from how much Bitcoin Strategy owns to whether it has the dollars to keep its word.
That shift is the heart of the current crisis.
The STRC crisis
The most acute stress is concentrated in STRC, and it is worth understanding in detail because it is where an abstract worry becomes a concrete problem.
STRC, formally a variable-rate perpetual preferred stock, was designed to trade near its $100 stated value, held there by a variable dividend mechanism that raises the payout to keep the price anchored.
Saylor has spent months explaining the structure publicly, framing STRC as part of Strategy’s broader Bitcoin-backed capital machine.
That design has failed under pressure.
STRC crashed to a record low, touching around $74 intraday before recovering somewhat, leaving it trading roughly a quarter below the par value it was engineered to hold.
A preferred stock trading that far below par is the market’s way of saying it demands far more yield before it will treat the instrument as sound, which is a vote of diminishing confidence in the dividend behind it.
The reason for that lost confidence is a squeeze coming from both directions at once.
As Strategy issued more and more STRC over the first half of 2026 to fund Bitcoin purchases, its annual dividend obligations ballooned from about $300 million at the start of the year to roughly $1.2 billion, a near fourfold increase in under six months.
At the same time, its cash reserves fell by 38% over the same period, drained in part by a $1.5 billion repurchase of convertible debt in May.
The result is a collapse in what analysts call dividend coverage, the measure of how long the company’s cash could keep funding the payouts: it fell from more than seven years to approximately 14 months.
A particularly unforgiving feature of STRC compounds the problem. Its dividends are cumulative, meaning any payment Strategy skips still has to be made up later.
So the company cannot simply switch the dividends off to conserve cash, and it is unlikely to suspend them anyway because doing so would shatter its credibility with the preferred holders it depends on.
CryptoQuant calculated that to restore a healthy 24 months of coverage and let STRC recover its peg, Strategy would need to rebuild its reserve to roughly $2.8 billion, against the roughly $1.4 billion it holds.
That is why CryptoQuant’s warning that Strategy should pause Bitcoin purchases and rebuild cash matters. The issue is not just the price of STRC; it is whether the cash behind the whole preferred-stock structure is thick enough to survive a prolonged Bitcoin drawdown.
STRC, in short, is the leg that is visibly cracking, and it is cracking because the cash behind its promises is running thinner while the promises themselves have multiplied.
The fraud probe and the analyst warnings
The financial squeeze has now drawn legal and analytical fire, which has intensified the pressure and the scrutiny.
A plaintiff law firm announced a securities-fraud investigation into Strategy and Michael Saylor, soliciting investors who bought the company’s securities and incurred losses, and saying it is examining whether the company may have issued materially misleading business information to the investing public.
The probe covers all five of Strategy’s publicly traded securities, the common stock and four series of preferred.
It is important to be precise about the status of this: an investigation announcement of this kind is common in volatile sectors, no class action has actually been filed, the allegations are unproven, and Strategy has not publicly responded.
It does not establish wrongdoing.
But it adds a layer of legal uncertainty and reputational pressure at the worst possible moment, and it has fed the narrative that something is wrong.
That narrative intensified because prominent critics have also tied the decline in MSTR and STRC to broader Bitcoin weakness, arguing that Strategy’s structure is no longer a harmless side story but a market stress point.
The analytical warnings have been sharper and more substantive than the legal noise.
CryptoQuant published a detailed report urging Strategy to stop buying Bitcoin and rebuild its cash position before resuming accumulation, laying out the collapse in dividend coverage and noting that the company sits on a large unrealized loss with every Bitcoin bought in 2024, 2025, and 2026 now underwater.
Its chief executive argued that a forced Bitcoin sale at current prices would crystallize those losses and destroy shareholder value.
He also separately observed that Strategy’s relentless buying had begun to look more like a liquidity sink than a price catalyst, absorbing capital without moving Bitcoin’s price upward.
Another firm suggested Strategy might eventually need to sell $3 billion to $4 billion of Bitcoin to ease the pressure on its capital structure, though it assigned that outcome only a modest probability and saw continued small stock sales as the likelier path.
Not all of the analysis was bearish. One firm rejected comparisons between STRC and the collapsed Terra stablecoin, arguing the funding engine had become less efficient rather than broken.
But the weight of the commentary converged on a single uncomfortable message: Strategy has overextended itself by buying too aggressively while its cash thinned, and the model needs to change, at least temporarily, to stabilize.
Saylor’s defense
Michael Saylor’s response to all of this has been characteristically defiant, and his arguments deserve a fair hearing because they are not without merit.
His central rebuttal, made in a public post, is one of scale: Strategy’s Bitcoin and cash reserves exceed its outstanding debt by roughly $48 billion, a cushion so large that talk of insolvency or forced selling, in his framing, misunderstands the company’s actual financial position.
He has emphasized that Strategy has raised more than $60 billion in additional capital since 2022 and invested it in Bitcoin, building the largest corporate stockpile in the world.
He points to that track record as evidence of a model that works through cycles rather than one on the verge of collapse.
His most pointed argument is historical.
Saylor has reminded the market that Strategy faced a far worse situation in the 2022 bear market, when Bitcoin fell below $16,000 and the company’s debt actually exceeded the combined value of its Bitcoin and cash reserves, with the stock falling roughly from the mid-$20s to the low teens on a split-adjusted basis.
Strategy survived that, he notes, by staying focused and continuing to execute its strategy, and went on to raise tens of billions more and add hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin.
The implication is clear: the company has been underwater before, in a deeper hole than today’s, and not only survived but expanded dramatically once Bitcoin recovered.
That makes the current stress, in Saylor’s framing, a familiar test rather than an existential threat.
Defenders have echoed and extended this case, with some arguing that Bitcoin’s market value cannot be pinned on any single individual and dismissing the comparisons between Strategy and collapsed crypto projects.
Others have praised STRC as a genuinely innovative instrument that strips volatility from Bitcoin exposure and could serve an enormous market.
Notably, Saylor has not publicly addressed the fraud investigation or the CryptoQuant warning directly, choosing instead to make the broad case for the company’s strength.
His defense, in essence, is that the fundamentals dwarf the fears, that the company has weathered worse, and that the panic reflects a temporary loss of confidence instead of a real flaw.
The hard choices
Whatever the rhetoric on either side, Strategy now faces a set of truly difficult choices, and laying them out shows why the situation is more than a passing scare even if it is not a collapse.
The company needs cash to fund STRC’s growing dividends and to rebuild the reserve that supports confidence in those dividends, and every available path to that cash carries a cost.
It can issue more common stock, but with MSTR trading below the value of its Bitcoin, doing so means heavy dilution that further erodes the reason to hold the stock, weakening the engine.
It can issue more preferred stock or raise STRC’s dividend rate to attract buyers, but more preferred means more dividend obligations and a higher rate deepens the cash drain, worsening the very problem it is trying to solve.
Each financing lever, in other words, tightens one part of the structure while loosening another.
That leaves the option the entire model was built to avoid: selling Bitcoin.
Selling would refill the reserve quickly and could even let Strategy buy back STRC below par, retiring a $100 claim for around $80, which on a spreadsheet is rational.
But it is precisely the move that would confirm the market’s deepest fear, because the whole proposition of the company is that its Bitcoin stack is permanent, a leveraged bet that never sells.
Strategy has already cracked that door open.
Earlier in June it sold 32 Bitcoin, a trivial amount against its holdings, to help fund preferred distributions, in what was its first net Bitcoin disposal since 2022.
The sale was tiny, but its symbolism was enormous, because it showed the treasury could become a funding source for the structure built on top of it, which reframes every future shortfall.
If a small sale was acceptable once, a larger one is no longer unthinkable, and selling near current levels would also turn paper losses into realized ones.
Strategy appears to have absorbed the warnings to some degree, slowing its Bitcoin buying sharply and routing fresh stock-raise proceeds into its cash reserve instead of into more Bitcoin.
That is a sensible defensive move, but it is also an admission that the relentless accumulation defining the company has had to pause.
That is a meaningful change in posture for a firm whose identity is built on never stopping.
Is the model breaking?
So is Saylor’s model actually breaking, or merely being tested?
The honest answer is that it depends almost entirely on one variable the company does not control: the BTC price the model depends on.
Both the bull and bear readings are internally coherent.
The case that it is not breaking rests on Saylor’s strongest point: there is no immediate crisis.
Strategy is not required to sell Bitcoin, faces no margin call, and holds Bitcoin worth far more than its debt, with a cash reserve it has just moved to strengthen.
STRC holders cannot redeem their shares against the treasury, which removes the run-on-the-bank dynamic that destroys leveraged structures.
The company has survived a deeper hole before. And a Bitcoin recovery would reset the entire picture, lifting the value of the holdings, reviving the premium in MSTR, restoring confidence in STRC, and turning today’s stress into a footnote.
On this reading, the model is bending under a cyclical downturn, exactly as it is designed to, and will spring back when Bitcoin does.
The case that it is breaking, or at least structurally strained, is subtler and does not depend on imminent collapse.
It is that the model’s efficiency, not its solvency, is the real casualty.
The flywheel worked because of the premium and the perpetual buying, and both have been compromised: the premium has inverted into a discount, making new stock issuance dilutive instead of accretive, and the buying has had to pause.
Meanwhile the cost of maintaining the structure keeps rising, with dividend obligations that have quadrupled and a coverage cushion that has thinned to little more than a year.
That means the company must now spend real resources just to hold the structure together until Bitcoin recovers.
This is why how treasury firms are valued matters. A Bitcoin treasury company can look simple when its stock trades above NAV; it looks very different when the premium becomes a discount.
The deeper worry is reflexive: the cleanest fix for the cash problem, selling Bitcoin, is also the action that would most damage the premium and the narrative that the stack is permanent.
That leaves the company caught between a cash squeeze and an identity it cannot abandon without undermining itself.
In this reading, the machine does not break in a single dramatic event. It grinds less efficiently, costs more to run, and depends ever more heavily on a Bitcoin recovery that may or may not come on the needed timeline.
The truest synthesis is that Strategy is not facing insolvency but is facing the first serious test of whether its financing model can function when its core assumptions, a rising Bitcoin and a premium stock, both fail at once.
The answer will be written by Bitcoin’s price over the coming months.
Until then, the model is neither clearly broken nor clearly fine, but visibly, and for the first time in years, under genuine strain.
Frequently asked questions
How much is Strategy underwater on its Bitcoin?
Strategy holds 847,363 Bitcoin, bought for roughly $64 billion at an average cost near $75,650 per coin. With Bitcoin trading below $60,000, that position is underwater by approximately $12 billion, meaning the coins are worth that much less than the company paid. Every Bitcoin purchased in 2024, 2025, and 2026 is now below its purchase price. Importantly, this is an unrealized loss: it does not force Strategy to sell, does not trigger a margin call, and would only become a realized loss if the company actually sold coins at current prices. A Bitcoin recovery would reduce or erase it.
What is STRC and why is it crashing?
STRC is Strategy’s variable-rate perpetual preferred stock, designed to trade near its $100 stated value, held there by a variable dividend mechanism, recently yielding around 11.5%. It crashed to a record low near $74, roughly a quarter below par, because confidence in the dividend behind it has weakened. As Strategy issued more STRC to fund Bitcoin buying, its annual dividend obligations quadrupled to about $1.2 billion while its cash reserves fell 38%, causing dividend coverage to collapse from over seven years to about 14 months. A preferred stock trading far below par signals the market demands much more yield before trusting the instrument.
Is Strategy going bankrupt or being forced to sell Bitcoin?
Not imminently. Strategy holds Bitcoin worth far more than its debt, faces no margin call, is not required to sell, and recently moved to strengthen its cash reserve. Michael Saylor has said the company’s Bitcoin and cash exceed its debt by roughly $48 billion. STRC holders also cannot redeem their shares against the treasury, which removes the run-on-the-bank dynamic. The real pressure is not insolvency but the rising cost of maintaining the structure: funding growing dividends and rebuilding cash while its stock trades at a discount. Selling Bitcoin is one option the company has tested in tiny amounts, but it is not being forced into a large sale at this time.
What is the fraud investigation about?
A plaintiff law firm announced a securities-fraud investigation into Strategy and Michael Saylor, examining whether the company may have issued materially misleading business information to investors, covering all five of its publicly traded securities. It is important to be precise: this is an investigation announcement, not a lawsuit. No class action has been filed, the allegations are unproven, and Strategy has not publicly responded. Announcements like this are common in volatile sectors and do not establish wrongdoing. However, it adds legal uncertainty and reputational pressure at a difficult moment, and it has been amplified by critics suggesting Saylor may have crossed marketing rules in how he promoted the preferred stock.
What does Michael Saylor say about all this?
Saylor has been defiant, arguing the fears misunderstand the company’s position. His central points are that Strategy’s Bitcoin and cash exceed its debt by roughly $48 billion, that it has raised more than $60 billion since 2022 and built the largest corporate Bitcoin stockpile in the world, and that it survived a worse situation in the 2022 bear market. Back then, its debt briefly exceeded its Bitcoin and cash, but the company stayed focused and continued to execute. The implication is that the current stress is a familiar cyclical test instead of an existential threat. He has not directly addressed the fraud investigation or the analyst warnings, choosing instead to make the broad case for the company’s strength.
Is Saylor’s model actually breaking?
It depends heavily on Bitcoin’s price, and both readings are coherent. The case that it is fine: there is no immediate crisis, no forced selling, Bitcoin worth far more than the debt, and a Bitcoin recovery would reset everything, so the model is bending under a downturn as designed. The case that it is strained: the model’s efficiency has been compromised because the stock premium that made buying accretive has become a discount, the buying has paused, and the cost of maintaining the structure keeps rising. The cleanest cash fix, selling Bitcoin, would also damage the permanent-stack narrative the company is built on. The honest verdict is that the model is not broken but is facing its first serious test of whether it works when both a rising Bitcoin and a premium stock fail at once.
This article is information, not investment advice. Financial figures, securities prices, the status of legal investigations, and company actions reflect reporting available as of June 28, 2026, and can change quickly. The securities-fraud investigation referenced is unproven and has not resulted in a filed lawsuit. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell MSTR, STRC, Bitcoin, or any security. Verify current details from primary sources and consider your own circumstances before making any decision.
Perhaps due to the quickly re-escalating tension in the Middle East, the cryptocurrency market has posted fresh losses over the past few hours, with BTC dropping to $62,000 after failing to reclaim the $63,000 support during the day.
XRP was not spared, as it just slipped below $1.05. The asset was rejected at $1.20 during the mid-July rally after the favorable US inflation data for June, and eventually lost the coveted $1.10 support. Now, it fights for the last line of defense before the bulls would have to defend the $1.00 zone.
Popular analyst EGRAG CRYPTO outlined the significance of the $1.05 level, calling it the ‘battlefield’ region. Although he noted earlier today that the cross-border token had managed to maintain that level, he acknowledged the predominantly bearish structure of lower highs on the 4-hour chart.
The short-term path of recovery would be a successful defense of $1.05 before XRP can bounce above $1.083 and eventually reclaim the $1.10 level, which now acts as resistance.
EGRAG laid out an even more promising road ahead for the asset if it manages to continue its recovery, with the “major price target” set at $1.30.
However, a decisive breakdown below $1.05 would essentially mean that XRP will head toward the notable liquidity zone at around $1.00, he warned.
Mikybull Crypto also believes XRP has the strength to stage a surprising comeback. The analyst claimed that the asset’s bullish reversal run is currently loading despite the negative outlook.
His long-term chart compares the current market structure with the one from two years ago when XRP was highly compressed at around $0.60. Once it broke out the upper boundary, though, it rocketed to a fresh all-time high within less than a year.
“Before the last run, I screamed for you to buy at a crazy discount. The opportunity is presenting again,” he said now.
History is not on XRP’s side at the moment, though, as August has been quite a painful month for the asset. As reported earlier today, the cross-border token was deep in the red in all four previous editions.
The post XRP Price Dips to ‘Battlefield’ Zone, but Analysts See Major Reversal Opportunity appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Pi Coin (PI) rose 8% on Saturday to $0.0870. The move pushed the token onto CoinGecko’s trending list, days before a hard deadline for Pi Network.
Nodes are the computers that check Pi transactions. The people who run them have until August 11 to install an update. Nodes that miss it get cut off.
Why Pi Coin Is Trending Again
CoinGecko ranked PI second on its trending board on Saturday. Most other coins on that list were falling. Pi Coin was one of the few going up.
The bigger picture is less kind. While PI has gained 7% over the past week, it is still down 25% over the past month. The token is worth about $957 million in total, making it the 67th largest coin.
Trading stayed thin. Pi Network market data shows roughly $8.6 million changed hands in 24 hours.
What the August 11 Deadline Means
Protocol v26 is the latest step in a long chain of updates that started at version 19. Pi says it makes smart contracts safer. It also improves how the network stores data and talks to other blockchains.
“Protocol 26 is a major milestone ahead of the final planned upgrade, Protocol 27. With 8 successful upgrades completed over the past few months, these final two upgrades will bring the network up to date with the latest protocol features, improvements, and functionality,” the team noted.
Follow us on X to get the latest news as it happens
Only node operators need to act. People who mine Pi on their phones do not. Pi lists every step on its node page.
Pi nodes agree on transactions in small trusted groups, a design borrowed from Stellar. The July 22 Protocol v25 rollout added the cryptography that privacy apps need.
Why Pi Coin Rallies Keep Fading
Traders have seen this before. PI jumped 24% ahead of the July 22 update. It handed the gain back once the day arrived. The Protocol 24 mainnet upgrade in June ended the same way.
Zoom out and it looks worse. PI hit a record low of $0.0710 on July 14. It now sits 79% below where it traded a year ago.
New supply is the main drag. PiScan data cited last month showed about 1.71 billion PI unlocking over the next year. That is a heavy load for a market trading under $10 million a day.
Protocol v27 is the last planned update. Whether August 11 shifts the PI price forecast outlook comes down to one thing. Buyers have to show up faster than the new coins do.
The post Pi Coin Defies Market Trend Before Key Deadline: Will the 10% Bounce Hold? appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Who are possible challengers to FIFA President Gianni Infantino?
Infantino was originally expected to easily retain his position at the helm of FIFA in March 2027.
Now, with public calls for review into his leadership, potential rivals may feel emboldened.
“FIFA is full of sharks, and there’s no question that many of them can smell blood. Infantino’s election in 2027, which seemed like a sure bet only a few days ago, is now an open question,” Boykoff says.
Challengers for his role must submit their candidacies by Nov. 18, and there has already been some speculation as to who might make a bid.
Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, president of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), was defeated by Infantino in 2016, the current administrator’s first term, but he could return a decade later as a frontrunner. He called Infantino’s investment proposal and his failure to consult AFC on it “totally unacceptable,” putting the two publicly at odds.
We will begin with the mandatory disclaimer, as we are well aware that historical performance does not guarantee similar moves in the future. However, history does tend to rhyme, and that’s what happened in July for BTC.
The question is: will August follow suit, as the month has not been kind to the largest cryptocurrency, especially the last four editions.
July Brought Some Gains
Before we explore what happened in July, here’s a brief outlook of the painful June, which set the stage for a rebound during the seventh month of the year. The 2026 edition of June became the most violent in terms of price moves for the cryptocurrency in precisely four years. It tumbled by 20.48% in 2026 compared to 37.28% in June 2022.
As such, it was almost expected that July would be a better month. History was also on BTC’s side as 9 out of the last 11 were in the green. However, the start was actually quite surprising as bitcoin dipped below $58,000 on July 1 for the first time in nearly two years.
The bears quickly lost control, though, and the asset reclaimed the coveted $60,000 level within a day or two. It wasn’t the most volatile of months, but BTC still managed to post some gains and peaked on July 21 at $67,000. This became its highest price tag in two months.
However, it was rejected there despite the softer-than-expected inflation data for June and the fact that the Fed refused to hike interest rates last week. Thus, bitcoin ended the month at under $64,000, which was still a 9% monthly increase.
Your Move, August
As popular analyst Ali Martinez put it yesterday: August hasn’t been kind to bitcoin. In fact, the last four have all been in the red, posting losses of 13.88%, 11.29%, 8.6%, and 6.49%, respectively. The silver lining is that the declines become less violent over time.
The broader August perspective is still deeply negative, though. Only three out of the last 12 editions have been in the green, with 2017 standing out as the most bullish one on record. At the time, BTC rocketed by over 65%, but it was a different time and a vastly different market phase.
For now, BTC enters August 2026 with lots of uncertainty not only within the industry itself, where interest has dwindled lately, but on a macro perspective as well. The war in the Middle East continues, and the one between Ukraine and Russia too, while inflation remains an issue, and Trump’s controversial actions tend to halt each breakout attempt in its tracks.
The post Bitcoin Rebounded in July, but Bears Target an August Pullback appeared first on CryptoPotato.
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A crypto-industry-backed political action committee affiliate has intensified its advertising push ahead of next week’s Michigan Republican primary, according to the latest Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings. Protect Progress PAC, which the filings indicate is funded largely by contributions from cryptocurrency companies Ripple Labs and Coinbase, has spent more than $2 million on media to influence the contest in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District.
The most recent updates, filed as of Thursday, show the committee ramping up spending in support of U.S. Representative Shri Thanedar while also funding opposition to his Democratic challenger, Donavan McKinney. The renewed disclosures come shortly after earlier reporting showed the PAC had already ramped up its buy—effectively doubling its reported ad spending from the prior week.
Key takeaways
- FEC filings show Protect Progress PAC has spent over $2 million on media for Michigan’s 13th district primary race.
- New disclosures add $884,240 to advertisements supporting Shri Thanedar and more than $150,000 to ads opposing Donavan McKinney.
- The PAC’s funding is described in the filings as being largely backed by cryptocurrency companies Ripple Labs and Coinbase.
- Thanedar’s legislative record includes support for crypto-related bills such as the GENIUS Act and the CLARITY Act.
- Protect Progress is an affiliate of Fairshake, a major outside spender in U.S. elections tied to crypto industry policy goals.
Michigan’s 13th district: Protect Progress increases ad buys
According to FEC disclosures accessed via the commission’s docquery system, Protect Progress PAC reported spending more than a combined $2 million on media in connection with Michigan Representative Shri Thanedar and his Democratic primary contest against Donavan McKinney.
As of Thursday, the filings reflect a further escalation: compared with what the PAC had already reported spending a week earlier, the committee’s latest report effectively doubled its media spending. The additional outlay includes $884,240 dedicated to ads supporting Thanedar and more than $150,000 aimed at opposing McKinney.
The Michigan primary is scheduled for Tuesday, but the filings underscore that the committee and its network have been willing to deploy substantial resources well before Election Day. Similar patterns have been visible across multiple congressional races during the 2026 cycle, according to the article’s referenced coverage and FEC-based reporting.
Why the race is drawing crypto-linked political money
Thanedar’s congressional record is at the center of the narrative around why outside groups see his candidacy as important for crypto policy. During his time in the House, he voted in favor of the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act and supported the legislative push for clearer digital asset market structure—the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, which has been discussed in the Senate.
He also cosponsored the Promoting Innovation in Blockchain Development Act, an effort aimed at protecting developers. Supporters of crypto policy reform often point to such measures as steps toward a more predictable regulatory environment, while critics argue the industry has too much influence over the political process.
For voters watching the contest, the spending escalation suggests the primary is being treated as more than a local political test—it is being framed by donors and advocacy networks as part of a broader strategy to influence which lawmakers back specific digital asset legislation.
McKinney’s response and the broader allegations over crypto influence
McKinney has publicly characterized the ad push as a payoff for political favors. In a July 21 statement related to the PAC spending, he said “the crypto lobby is paying my opponent back for helping Trump make over $1 billion since taking office,” according to a video shared on his campaign’s Facebook page.
That comment appears to reference the U.S. President’s disclosures about crypto-related earnings, including a figure cited in earlier reporting referenced by the article—more than $1.4 billion from crypto investments in 2025—along with concerns raised by Democrats that Trump could be using his role to profit through policies such as GENIUS.
While those claims are rooted in political argument rather than direct proof of intent tied to the specific Michigan ads, they highlight a recurring tension in U.S. crypto politics: outside spending may be framed by industry-aligned PACs as policy support, while opponents often describe it as evidence of undue influence.
Cointelegraph reports that it reached out to both Thanedar’s and McKinney’s campaigns for comment on the PAC expenditures but did not receive an immediate response.
Fairshake’s affiliates: national momentum in multiple primaries
Protect Progress PAC is an affiliate of Fairshake, a political network that has become one of the most prominent outside spenders linked to crypto industry policy goals. Fairshake was responsible for spending more than $170 million across the 2024 election cycle through media buys supporting candidates it viewed as aligned with crypto-friendly regulation, as summarized in the article.
The article also notes that affiliates have already deployed millions of dollars in 2026 races beyond Michigan, pointing to activity in states including Texas and Illinois. In addition, it cites Public Citizen reporting from June that Fairshake and its affiliates accounted for more than $82 million out of roughly $189 million deployed by crypto companies during the 2026 election cycle.
Fairshake itself reportedly listed holding a $193 million “war chest” as of January, according to figures referenced in the piece. Taken together with the Michigan disclosures, the pattern suggests a sustained approach: deploy substantial resources early enough to shape narrative and voter attention around specific legislative priorities.
The article further describes similar affiliate activity in other congressional primaries. It says Defend American Jobs PAC spent more than $65,000 on media in Washington’s 4th congressional district to support a Republican candidate, with Washington holding primaries on the same day as Michigan.
In Alabama, scheduled primaries on Aug. 11 are also described as a focus for Fairshake-linked spending. FEC filings cited in the article indicate Defend American Jobs PAC spent more than $511,000 on media supporting Jerry Carl Jr., a Republican who represented Alabama’s 1st congressional district from 2021 to 2025.
For readers tracking the cycle, these parallel contests illustrate how crypto-aligned PAC affiliates appear to treat primary elections as strategic targets—places where candidate positioning on digital asset policy could be determined before general election dynamics begin.
What to watch as Michigan’s primary approaches
With Michigan’s 13th district primary scheduled for Tuesday, the key question is whether Protect Progress’s latest ad surge will further alter voter perceptions or turnout in the remaining days. More broadly, the filings reinforce that crypto-linked political spending is not limited to high-profile general election races—affiliates are actively contesting primaries with resources intended to influence policy direction well after election season announcements fade.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) says this bear market has no shortage of money. Plenty of it is hunting for somewhere to go.
Elsewhere, Social Capital founder Chamath Palihapitiya said where he thinks it should land. Not in artificial intelligence (AI) chips.
The Bear Market Has Money. It Is Not Buying Crypto
CZ did not say where the money should go, but acknowledged that there was a lot of liquidity floating despite the bear market.
The numbers show why it is not going into crypto. Bitcoin (BTC) trades near $63,037. It is down 45% in a year. That is almost exactly half its October 6 record.
Chamath Is Buying Land, Not Chips
Meanwhile, the Social Capital founder Chamath Palihapitiya, a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and investor, buys three things at once. Land, a power connection, and an empty building to hold the computers.
“LPS (Land Power Shell) is still the most obvious and fastest path to cash on cash returns,” Palihapitiya wrote.
Palihapitiya is a former senior executive at Facebook (now Meta), a renowned SPAC sponsor, and former minority owner of the Golden State Warriors.
His reason is simple. Towns keep blocking data centers. Every site that already has power gets rarer.
The numbers back him. Data Center Watch counted at least 75 US projects blocked or delayed in early 2026, worth about $130 billion.It was the worst quarter on record. Opposition groups doubled and now operate in 49 states.
Politicians joined in. More than 300 state data center bills were filed in six weeks. Maine missed becoming the first state to ban them outright by one House vote.
Why He Quit the Chip Business
He says he helped start Groq in 2016. Nvidia licensed Groq’s technology last December. The deal was not exclusive. Groq founder Jonathan Ross moved to Nvidia.
Neither company gave a price, but Palihapitiya says $20 billion. Still, he would not do it again as chips have to run too fast, factories have to be too exact, and a startup cannot get enough memory.
How Much Power He Has Bought
Palihapitiya says he and his partner Anita Vlallian have acquired almost six gigawatts (GW). It arrives in stages through 2029.
One deal shows the going rate. Nasdaq-listed TeraWulf used to mine Bitcoin. In July it leased a 401-megawatt site in Hawesville, Kentucky, to Anthropic. The lease runs 20 years and should bring in about $19 billion.
Here is the part that proves his point. That site is not built yet. Power starts flowing in late 2027 and reaches full load in early 2028.
The money is committed anyway. Palihapitiya holds roughly 15 times that much capacity. His is not leased out yet, so the figure shows the size of his bet, not its value.
However, miners got there first, and already own cheap power, land with grid hookups, and empty sheds. Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong disputed the mining warning in July.
What Could Go Wrong
Jordi Visser of 22V Research says easy money is over in AI. He expects about 30% a year now.
The land bet also needs the protests to keep coming. If towns start approving data centers again, the scarcity goes away.
TeraWulf’s $19 billion is a forecast too. Its own filing calls it expected revenue.
CZ is right. The money is out there. The question is whether it buys power lines or comes back to Bitcoin and crypto markets.
The post CZ Says Bear Market Money is Hunting, Social Capital Founder Says Skip AI Chips appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Trading volume for tokenized stocks and ETFs surged 288% to a record $11.3 billion in July, though most of the increase came from a single Binance-linked token.
Binance bStocks accounted for $9.41 billion, or 83.3% of the total, according to CoinDesk Data’s latest Stablecoins & Tokenized Assets report. A bStocks token, QQQB, tracking Invesco’s QQQ ETF, generated $9.27 billion alone, equivalent to roughly 82% of all tokenized-equity volume.
Excluding QQQB, July volume was roughly $2.03 billion, about 30% below the market’s implied June total of $2.91 billion. xStocks volume dropped to $335 million from $1.55 billion, while Ondo recorded $792 million and Backpack $479 million, the report details.
QQQB began trading on Binance on June 30 with zero maker fees through Aug. 31. Binance also began counting stocks and bStocks volume at three times its traded value for some users seeking higher VIP tiers on July 23, though the multiplier does not alter actual trading volume.
An affiliate committee of the crypto-focused Fairshake political operation has increased its ad spending ahead of next week’s primary election in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The spending highlights how cryptocurrency companies continue to shape campaign activity through super PAC and affiliate structures as lawmakers consider major digital-asset policy.
As of Thursday, Protect Progress PAC reported spending more than $2 million on broadcast and digital media related to the Michigan Democratic primary between Rep. Shri Thanedar and challenger Donavan McKinney. The latest filing reflected a rapid acceleration from the amount the PAC reported just a week earlier, including nearly $884,240 in additional ad buys supporting Thanedar and more than $150,000 aimed at opposing McKinney.
Key takeaways
- Protect Progress PAC reported over $2 million in media spending tied to Michigan’s 13th District Democratic primary, based on FEC filings as of Thursday.
- New filings nearly doubled prior reported spend, adding $884,240 for Thanedar and more than $150,000 to oppose McKinney.
- The spending is connected to crypto-aligned political groups, with Protect Progress described as an affiliate of Fairshake.
- Thanedar’s record includes crypto-related legislative actions, including support for stablecoin and digital asset market structure proposals.
- Fairshake affiliates are active in multiple primaries, including races in Washington and Alabama ahead of their own election dates.
Michigan primary: Protect Progress ramps up ad buys
FEC documents show Protect Progress PAC has concentrated its spending on one of the most closely watched parts of this election cycle for crypto industry-aligned political efforts: candidate positioning around digital-asset legislation. In Michigan’s 13th district, the committee’s ad spending is designed to back incumbent Rep. Shri Thanedar while targeting his Democratic primary opponent, Donavan McKinney.
The latest filing effectively widened the committee’s footprint compared with what it had reported in an earlier submission. It added $884,240 in media expenditures supporting Thanedar and more than $150,000 opposing McKinney, bringing total reported media spend to over $2 million.
FEC filings are available through the committee’s FEC record: FEC document inquiry.
Why Thanedar’s crypto record mattered to the PAC
Protect Progress’s focus on Thanedar aligns with the incumbent’s legislative record on digital-asset issues. During his time in the U.S. House, Thanedar voted in favor of stablecoin-focused legislation known as the GENIUS Act. He also voted in favor of a crypto market structure proposal currently under consideration in the Senate, the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act.
In addition, Thanedar cosponsored the Promoting Innovation in Blockchain Development Act, an effort aimed at protecting blockchain developers. For PAC-affiliated political spending, these votes and sponsorships are often treated as concrete signals of candidate alignment—especially as CLARITY work advances through Congress.
McKinney’s campaign challenged the premise that the race is driven solely by local issues. In a July 21 statement related to the PAC’s spending, McKinney argued that “the crypto lobby is paying my opponent back” for his support of policy decisions tied to the Trump administration.
McKinney also referenced President Donald Trump’s disclosures that he earned more than $1.4 billion from crypto investments in 2025, including through his memecoin, Official Trump (TRUMP), and via his family’s business, World Liberty Financial. Democrats have frequently accused the Trump administration of profiting from its position through laws affecting the crypto sector, including proposals like GENIUS. (Those claims are linked in the original reporting to Trump’s disclosed earnings and related coverage.)
Fairshake affiliates keep spending across the election map
Protect Progress is described as an affiliate of the Fairshake PAC. Fairshake and related committees have been a major force in U.S. federal elections in recent cycles, channeling large sums toward candidates seen as supportive of crypto-industry aligned policy.
Earlier reporting cited that Fairshake was responsible for more than $170 million in spending during the 2024 election cycle through media supporting candidates it viewed as favorable to crypto policy. The same reporting framework also noted that Protect Progress and other affiliates had already directed millions of dollars into 2026 races in multiple states.
More broadly, the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen reported in June that Fairshake and its affiliates accounted for spending of more than $82 million out of roughly $189 million that crypto companies used across the 2026 election cycle. Public Citizen also reported Fairshake’s claimed war chest of $193 million as of January, underscoring the scale of activity behind affiliate PAC machinery.
More primaries: Washington and Alabama spotlight additional spending
While Michigan remains a focal point, other Fairshake affiliates have also targeted races as primaries approach. In Washington’s 4th congressional district, the Fairshake affiliate Defend American Jobs PAC spent more than $65,000 on media to support a Republican candidate. Washington’s primary is scheduled for the same day as Michigan’s.
Alabama’s primary, set for Aug. 11, has similarly attracted attention from Fairshake affiliates. FEC filings indicate Defend American Jobs spent more than $511,000 on media supporting Jerry Carl Jr., a Republican who served in Alabama’s 1st congressional district from 2021 to 2025.
One additional datapoint in the reporting around the Alabama race is the scale of the candidate’s personal wealth. The original article referenced a reported net worth figure of up to $15 million in 2023, citing a separate local report.
What to watch next in crypto-linked elections
As PAC affiliate spending continues to surge in primary contests, voters and market participants will likely watch whether crypto-aligned policy commitments translate into measurable legislative momentum—particularly on stablecoin and market-structure proposals such as GENIUS and CLARITY. The next FEC disclosures may clarify how much more media time these committees add as voting dates approach.
It was precisely six years ago when a rather unknown company in the cryptocurrency industry at the time made a revolutionary change to its asset reserve strategy and adopted Bitcoin. The entity in question, called MicroStrategy back then, started to accumulate BTC en masse and only accelerated its purchases after the 2024 presidential elections in the US.
The community became accustomed to hearing about new acquisitions made by the company, some of which were worth billions of dollars. Its total stash grew exponentially and currently sits at 843,775 units. Within this timeframe, BTC bulls consistently heard that the company (and its former CEO) would never sell… until they did. And then everything changed.
During the most recent earnings call, the company hinted that it has plans to sell up to $5 billion in bitcoin, which is significantly higher than the previously claimed $1.25 billion.
The Latest Shift
Strategy (as it is called now) has gone five consecutive weeks without purchasing BTC, marking its longest acquisition pause in years. Instead of deploying capital into BTC, the firm has steadily increased its cash reserve through recent fundraising activities. As we previously reported, Strategy has been rebuilding its USD position while continuing to explore financial options tied to its expanding portfolio of preferred stock offerings.
In the most recent official change, CEO Phong Le took to X to announce the company’s new primary corporate objective, which reads:
“Our corporate objective is for STRC to trade at $99-$100 over time.”
In the earnings call, he was more specific:
“Our intent is to sell bitcoin for three reasons when we think it’s appropriate for the company. One, fund the U.S. dollar reserve up to $1.25 billion. Additional reasons include funding dividend and interest payments of $1.76 billion a year and funding up to $2 billion in common and preferred stock repurchases,” Le said, according to a FactSet transcript.
The tweet and comments garnered immediate reactions from some well-known industry commentators as well as constant critic Peter Schiff, who was quick to determine that: “In other words, common shareholders are screwed.”
Crypto Kaleo, though, a popular analyst who recently argued that Strategy would have to sell at least 50,000 BTC in the next couple of years to fund dividend payments, wasn’t so kind. In one tweet, he ironically asked whether the CEO remembers when the company’s primary corporate objective was to increase Bitcoin per share before adding: “It was only two months ago, so shouldn’t be difficult!”
In another post, though, he brought the bashing to a higher level, claiming that Strategy is no longer a BTC company. Instead, it operates as a credit company, and its credit rating is “atrocious.”
Strategy went from having a primary objective of increasing Bitcoin per share to trying to make sure their preferred shares trade back to $100… in just two months.
They’re no longer a BTC company.
They’re a credit company.
And their credit rating is atrocious. https://t.co/fHoXr376QY
— K A L E O (@CryptoKaleo) July 31, 2026
The comments below his post were split. Some agreed that Strategy is increasingly resembling a leveraged financial organization rather than a straightforward BTC holding company. Others defended the firm’s approach, noting that maintaining confidence in STRC is essential if Strategy wants to continue raising capital efficiently and safely for future crypto purchases.
STRC Matters
The Saylor-co-founded company launched STRC as part of its growing suite of preferred stock offerings designed to finance its long-term BTC accumulation strategy. However, it needs to trade at its par price of $100 to function properly, and it hasn’t been able to for months. It dumped below $75 at one point, before the company shifted its focus to rebuilding its USD reserve. It has since recovered to almost $90.
As such, some investors view Le’s comments as a tactical, short-term objective rather than believing Strategy has abandoned its Bitcoin-focused vision. Still, the timing has fueled questions about the firm’s evolving identity and strategy, especially given the ongoing market uncertainty.
The post Analyst Blasts Strategy After CEO Signals New Priority Beyond Bitcoin appeared first on CryptoPotato.
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