MoonPay, a crypto payments company, agreed to acquire private-markets infrastructure provider North Capital, expanding into regulated US securities infrastructure as it builds out services for tokenized real-world assets (RWAs).

The acquisition would allow MoonPay to expand into the issuance, custody and secondary trading of private securities, including tokenized securities, the company said in an announcement shared with Cointelegraph on Wednesday.

MoonPay’s all-stock deal to acquire North Capital is worth more than $60 million, a person familiar with the matter told Cointelegraph. MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright said the acquisition would help the company connect parts of the financial system through “modern, programmable infrastructure.”

The Midvale, Utah company last raised money in October 2021, in a $2.18 million seed round at an unspecified valuation, according to data compiled by Traxcn. Investors include Karlani Capital and Fiduciary Trust International. MoonPay is currently valued at $3.4 billion, according to Traxcn.

North Capital’s businesses include broker-dealers, an alternative trading system (ATS), a transfer agent and an investment adviser, all registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The company has supported more than $8.7 billion in primary and secondary transaction volume, according to the announcement.

North Capital will become a wholly owned MoonPay subsidiary after the transaction closes. Both companies’ boards approved the acquisition, which remains subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

The acquisition is the latest in MoonPay’s buying spree this year as the company expands beyond crypto payments. Earlier purchases included key management company Sodot, trading infrastructure platform DFlow and AI finance operations platform Entendre, adding capabilities across institutional custody, onchain trading and financial operations.

Related: Robinhood takes stakes in Crypto.com, OG.com in prediction markets deal

“Tokenization is coming to America,” said Robinhood chief executive Vlad Tenev after the SEC announced its Innovation Exemption last week — and it seems the markets looked kindly on the development.

BTC and ETH soared over 10%, and Uniswap’s UNI token — a protocol that looks as it if could become prime real estate for tokenized stock trading — gained more than 30% in the days that followed.

While the Securities and Exchange Commission has indeed greenlit tokenized stocks in America, most of the existing stock tokens fall outside of the new rules.

The commission’s new five-year Innovation Exemption creates a path for certain venues to trade tokenized National Market System (NMS) stocks onchain without registering as a securities exchange, and for third parties to tokenize stocks — but only under a specific set of conditions.

Tokens must give holders the same “rights and privileges” as the underlying shares and trading venues need to permission users and pools.

Related: Kraken brings DeFi yield to tokenized stocks and ETFs

Not all tokenized stocks are created equal. A token can look like a share and track the price of a share without providing the shareholder rights of a share. Under the new rules that’s classified as a synthetic stock and it’s not compliant.

UNI gained over 30% after the SEC announcement. Source: Coingecko

That means some of the industry’s biggest players may already have a head start, while others will have to play catch-up. As Ondo Finance’s head of global regulatory affairs, Peter Curley, tells Magazine:

“Not everything we do will fit, and that’s fine. What matters is that the SEC acted instead of waiting on Congress to finish the job.”

The SEC’s tokenization lane is narrow

The SEC’s Sept. 17 order gives certain venues temporary relief from having to register as exchanges when they trade tokenized NMS stocks through permissioned AMM liquidity pools.

In other words, the agency has opened a lane for onchain stock trading, but it’s a fairly specific one, and the token itself becomes just as important as the venue.

To qualify, a tokenized stock must give holders the same dividends and voting rights as the underlying security.

While a third party can tokenize a stock without being affiliated with the issuer, the issuer gets a chance to nix the token before it can be traded.

That rules out synthetic exposure which is bad news for Robinhood’s Stock Tokens and Kraken’s xStocks in their current forms.

Commissioner Hester Peirce stressed that the exemption covers one particular model rather than every possible way of trading tokenized securities, although she said the SEC is open to other models outside the TSV structure.

The products closest to the SEC’s model

Coinbase’s stock tokens are in the ballpark.

On Sept. 14, chief executive Brian Armstrong said the company had “set the standard” with its tokenized stocks, as they are not synthetic or debt instruments, but are “real fully-backed securities, redeemable for the underlying shares, with dividends integrated,” and voting rights “coming soon.”

Related: Robinhood chain to generate $160M in annual fees by 2028: Bernstein

However, Coinbase’s current tokenized stock offering is for non-US customers, and its exchange infrastructure is built around a central limit order book. The SEC’s exemption is built around TSVs providing permissioned AMM liquidity pools. Coinbase operates the Base network however, so it has options in that regard.

Ondo launched tokenized US securities in June, with the underlying shares held in traditional custody and the token representing the investor’s entitlement onchain.

SEC issues Innovation Exemption. Source: SEC

It also acquired Oasis Pro, which includes an SEC-registered broker-dealer, ATS and transfer agent, with infrastructure across the traditional and onchain sides of the market.

Curley says the SEC’s exemption favors “exactly the model we’ve already proven out: custodial, entitlement-based, with real shareholder rights and corporate actions passing through to the holder.” However, he adds, “we’re not assuming anything clears automatically.”

Both Coinbase and Ondo have pieces of the infrastructure the SEC seems to want. Neither can assume its existing setup qualifies without some finessing, but they may have less to rebuild.

Uniswap’s permissioned pools could open the door

The SEC exemption is specifically designed around permissioned AMM liquidity pools, which looks like being good news for Uniswap.

The protocol introduced Permissioned Pools for v4 in July, allowing regulated assets to trade through AMMs with compliance enforced directly onchain.

While that doesn’t make Uniswap itself a TSV, its v4 infrastructure could be used by operators building one, as Permissioned Pools let issuers control who can trade or provide liquidity, which is consistent with the SEC’s requirements.

Permissioned access requires Know Your Customer (KYC) verification, record keeping, public notices and transaction transparency.

If that infrastructure can be connected to the shareholder rights and regulatory infrastructure required for US securities trading, Uniswap potentially has a framework that could be adapted to the SEC’s model.

Robinhood has the users, but not the right product

Robinhood already has around 200 stock tokens trading on Robinhood Chain, which Tenev has described as one-to-one backed and fully DeFi composable.

But the head of research at Four Pillars, Jaewon Kim, pointed out that the SEC’s order excludes synthetic exposure, which rules out products like Stock Tokens and Kraken’s xStocks.

Robinhood’s Stock Tokens are tokenized debt securities issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited. That means they provide economic exposure to the underlying stocks but don’t give holders legal or beneficial rights. They’re also not registered under US securities laws and not available to US persons.

Chairman Paul Atkins says the period will allow the market to “develop.” Source: SEC

But while Robinhood’s existing product doesn’t fit the SEC’s rules, its distribution and blockchain infrastructure could give it a big advantage if it can adapt its model to the new requirements.

Kraken’s xStocks are fully backed by underlying equities but they also don’t give holders the same rights as conventional shares. And being backed by shares is not enough to qualify for this exemption.

Bryan Choe, head of research and operations at RWA.xyz, a market intelligence platform for tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), says most existing tokenized equity products are currently third-party sponsored, but he expects that to change in the next 12 months.

He tells Magazine, “We expect most of the products to shift to issuer-sponsored models.” He says the exemption “aligns the token issuers with the stock issuers,” and could bring more balance between different issuance models.

Five years to prove tokenized stocks are actually better

The SEC describes the exemption as temporary, and chairman Paul Atkins says the five-year-long period will allow the market to “develop” while the commission “evaluates future rulemaking.”

Beyond which company gets the first compliant venue, the real test is whether tokenized stocks will take off in the first place.

As Curley says, investors need to end up with something “faster, cheaper, or more useful than a conventional brokerage position.” Questions have already been raised over whether the fragmented liquidity for stock tokens will provide good prices or a decent user experience.

The exemption could enable 24/7 trading, fractional ownership, faster settlement, onchain composability and shareholder rights. But at the end of the day, those advantages only matter if investors actually care.

Related: Is there any chance left to save the CLARITY Act?

Bitcoin price fell below $85,000 on Sep. 23 after briefly trading above $87,000, as a rally driven partly by short liquidations lost momentum. The daily chart showed BTC near $84,344, down 2.16% for the session.

Bitcoin price pulls back after testing $87K

The daily chart shows Bitcoin (BTC) price reaching $87,278.54 before falling to about $84,344. The move took price back below the chart’s $85,743.69 upper Bollinger Band after a sharp climb from mid-September lows near $75,000.

The 4-hour chart captures the latest pullback more clearly. Its current candle fell from an open near $85,650 to roughly $84,329, with a low around $83,864. Price remained above the 4-hour Supertrend line at $83,592.86, though the drop brought that level back into view.

Bitcoin’s daily relative strength index, or RSI, stood at 65.31. A reading above 50 shows that recent gains still outweigh recent losses, but the indicator had eased after approaching the 70 level earlier in the rally. On the 4-hour chart, the Chaikin Money Flow indicator remained positive at 0.12, suggesting buying pressure had not fully disappeared as price pulled back.

The charts therefore show a pause in a strong advance, with the immediate test shifting from whether Bitcoin can extend its breakout to whether buyers defend the levels gained this week.

Short covering helped drive the rally

Alice Liu, head of research at CoinMarketCap, noted that the climb toward $87,000 reflected traders closing bearish positions. She said Monday’s forced short covering was roughly ten times the value of long liquidations, while total liquidations had fallen to half their 30-day average by Tuesday.

“Bitcoin’s move to $87,000 was not a wave of new buying, it was the unwinding of bearish positioning. The fuel is behind us, not ahead.”

Liu’s assessment points to a question for the next leg of the move: whether spot buyers can sustain prices once forced purchases from closing short positions subside. A CryptoQuant chart shows futures demand improving while its measure of spot demand remains below zero. The chart supports a distinction between stronger derivatives activity and confirmed spot buying; it does not, on its own, establish where price will go next.

The one-week CoinGlass liquidation heatmap shows a bright band around $84,500 to $85,000 near the latest price action. Another concentration lies around $82,500 to $83,000, with a separate band near $87,000 to $87,500 above. Those bands mark estimated areas of leveraged positions that could face liquidation if price reaches them, rather than firm support or resistance.

Bitcoin’s $83,600 support faces a short-term test

The 4-hour Supertrend at about $83,593 is the closest marked technical level below price. Holding above it would leave Bitcoin within the recent upward 4-hour trend. A sustained move below it would put the $82,500 to $83,000 area shown on the CoinGlass heatmap in focus.

Ardi, an analyst, said Bitcoin had lost the $85,000 base of a 4-hour bull flag and identified $81,000 to $83,000 as the next liquidity area. The daily chart places its 20-day Bollinger Band midpoint lower, near $79,528, showing how far Bitcoin has moved above its recent daily average.

On the upside, buyers would first need to reclaim $85,000 and then the recent high near $87,279. The CoinGlass heatmap shows estimated liquidation liquidity around $87,000 to $87,500, close to that high. A move through the area would need to hold to establish whether the rally has regained momentum.

Neither the heatmap nor the indicators guarantee a move toward any particular level. They identify where the current pullback may test the trend and where leveraged positions appear concentrated.

Analysts differ on Bitcoin’s staying power

Tony Dicarlo, director of institutional propositions at RootstockLabs, told crypto.news that Bitcoin had moved back above its 50-week and 200-week moving averages and risen about 29% over 35 days. He linked the broader recovery to US policy developments, macro conditions and demand through spot Bitcoin ETFs.

Dicarlo said the SEC’s tokenized securities proposal and a House committee’s progress on the American Reserve Modernization Act had helped confidence. The House Financial Services Committee voted 28–21 on Sep. 16 to advance the reserve bill; it would still need to pass both chambers before becoming law.

“Looking ahead, I’m not calling winter over outright, but with the bad news now largely priced in, a confluence of good news, regulatory, legislative and macro, is helping bitcoin build higher.”

Liu’s shorter-term reading is more cautious. Her liquidation figures suggest that a source of automatic buying has faded, even as Dicarlo sees support from policy developments and fund flows. The two views turn on different evidence: what powered the move to $87,000 and what could support Bitcoin after the squeeze.

US ETF inflows provide a test of spot demand

US-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $999 million in net inflows on Sep. 21, according to Farside Investors. The figure measures demand for the funds on that trading day; it should not be treated as the Sep. 23 flow or as proof that buyers will defend the current price.

For US investors, the next ETF reports offer a way to check whether fund demand continues as Bitcoin pulls back. The nearer price test is $83,593 on the 4-hour chart. A hold there would keep the recent rise intact on that indicator, while a break would bring the lower liquidity band into view.

Ethereum price fell below $2,700 on Sep. 23 after a rally toward $2,800 stalled. The reversal brought the day’s $2,648 low into focus, while US spot Ethereum ETFs had recorded two consecutive days of net inflows before the pullback.

Ethereum price $2,800 breakout runs out of steam

The daily chart showed ETH price near $2,675 at 15:07 UTC on Sep. 23. It had opened around $2,754, reached approximately $2,789, and fallen as low as $2,648. The decline stood at 2.84% for the session when the chart was captured.

The reversal followed a rally from around $2,400 in mid-September. ETH moved through the former $2,550 resistance area and approached $2,800 before turning lower. The daily chart marks a nearby level at $2,809.68, which remains above the latest high.

The 4-hour chart shows how quickly the sell-off developed. A candle with a high near $2,730 dropped to roughly $2,648, taking ETH below its 20-period simple moving average at $2,709.81. The loss of that short-term average leaves $2,700 as the first level buyers would need to regain.

ETH was still above the 4-hour 50-, 100- and 200-period moving averages at $2,586.27, $2,540.4,9 and $2,499.93, respectively. The gap between the current price and those averages shows how far the rally had carried ETH before the latest retreat.

ETF inflows continue as ETH pulls back

The rejection near $2,800 came after a steep advance, making the recent gains a possible source of selling pressure. Price action alone, however, does not establish whether profit-taking, new short positions, or another factor drove the decline.

US spot Ethereum ETF data show that fund demand had strengthened ahead of the reversal. Farside Investors recorded $270 million in net inflows on Sep. 21 and another $162.2 million on Sep. 22. The two sessions brought in a combined $432.2 million.

The next flow report will show whether US ETF investors continued buying as ETH retreated from $2,800. Fund flows and exchange trading measure different activity, so the prior inflows do not settle whether buyers will defend the current price area.

US interest rates also remain part of the market backdrop. The Federal Reserve raised its target range by 25 basis points to 3.75%–4.00% on Sep. 16. The decision preceded ETH’s latest rally and pullback; the price charts do not establish a direct link between the rate decision and the Sep. 23 reversal.

A break below $2,648 could expose lower liquidity bands

The day’s low near $2,648 is ETH’s nearest observed downside level. A move below it would put the lower bands on CoinGlass’s three-day liquidation heatmap in focus, including areas around $2,650 and $2,630.

The heatmap also shows a concentration near $2,700, close to the level ETH lost during the decline. Liquidation bands mark prices where leveraged positions may face pressure if reached. They can change as traders open and close positions, and they do not guarantee that price will move toward them.

For a recovery, ETH would first need to regain $2,700 and its 7-hour 20-period average near $2,710. The next tests would be the recent $2,789 high and the daily chart’s marked level near $2,810. Holding above those levels would provide stronger evidence that buyers had overcome the rejection near $2,800.

Daily momentum readings still reflect the earlier rise. MACD stood above its signal line, at 96.80 versus 83.87, and its histogram remained positive at 12.94. Aroon Up was 85.71%, compared with Aroon Down at 42.86%. The latest daily decline shows that those broader readings have yet to produce a sustained move above $2,800.

Trader points to $2,550, but nearer levels come first

Crypto trader Ted Pillows identified $2,550 as ETH’s largest liquidity cluster and said the token could revisit that level before another move higher. His forecast puts a deeper pullback in view, beyond the nearer bands around $2,650 and $2,630.

The $2,550 area sits close to ETH’s 4-hour 100-period moving average at $2,540.49 and the daily chart’s 0.786 retracement level at $2,531.99. Those nearby readings make the area one to watch if the sell-off extends, though ETH would first have to fall through the Sep. 23 low.

For now, $2,648 and $2,710 frame the immediate setup. Holding above the low would keep a short-term recovery possible; reclaiming the moving average would put the recent high back in view. A break below $2,648 would shift attention to the lower liquidation bands and, if selling continued, the $2,532–$2,550 area.

Strategy resumed buying after a two week pause, but its latest purchase came from cash while its stock sales remained idle. Meanwhile a review of five Strive filings shows a different pattern: rapid Bitcoin growth alongside a rising common share count and a growing preferred stock obligation. The useful comparison is how much Bitcoin each common share can claim, not the size of a single purchase.

Strategy has resumed Bitcoin purchases with 950 BTC bought for $75.7 million, while Strive has added 1,355 BTC in a substantially overlapping reporting period and continued expanding a preferred stock program that helps finance its treasury.

Strategy’s Sept. 21 Form 8-K says the company bought Bitcoin using existing USD Cash and sold no shares through its at the market programs from Sept. 14 through Sept. 20. Strive’s filing on the same day shows a larger purchase, a higher common share count and 786,194 additional SATA preferred shares outstanding. The two companies bought the same asset at almost the same average price, but the capital moving behind each purchase was different.

Strategy’s Bitcoin purchase did not restart its share sales

Strategy reported that it paid an average of $79,670 per BTC, including expenses. Its total position rose from 845,050 BTC to 846,000 BTC, a gain of 0.112%. The purchase ended two consecutive reporting periods in which Strategy bought no Bitcoin and sold no shares under its ATM programs. crypto.news previously examined the two week pause and the cash being directed toward preferred share repurchases.

Buying resumed. The financing method used for this purchase did not resemble the one that built much of Strategy’s position. In its Aug. 31 filing, the company said proceeds from MSTR share sales financed a 4,603 BTC purchase worth $369.7 million. The latest 950 BTC came from USD Cash already on the balance sheet. A company can repeat purchases funded by new issuance while buyers keep taking its securities. A cash funded purchase instead draws on a finite pool unless the money is replenished.

The cash pool had another claimant. Strategy used $174 million to repurchase 1,771,238 STRC preferred shares during the same week. That was approximately $2.30 spent on STRC for each dollar spent on Bitcoin. Its USD Cash declined from roughly $1.30 billion to $1.05 billion after the two transactions. Its separate USD Reserve fell from roughly $5.10 billion to $5.04 billion after $57.4 million in preferred dividends and debt interest.

STRC spending split detailed has already been reported. It should not be mistaken for proof that Strategy has abandoned accumulation. The company’s filing records one week’s uses of capital. Its Aug. 31 filing shows that it can resume ATM issuance when it chooses and the market permits it. The question posed by the latest period is narrower: how much new Bitcoin did each company put behind its common stock, and what claims came with it?

A bigger Bitcoin purchase does not answer the shareholder question

Strive paid about $79,475 per coin for 1,355 BTC from Sept. 14 through Sept. 18. Its holdings rose from 25,000 to 26,355 BTC, or 5.42%. Strategy’s 950 BTC purchase grew its much larger position by 0.112%. On those two percentages alone, Strive’s treasury expanded about 48 times faster in the latest disclosed period.

The comparison is striking, but a company’s coin count is only the numerator of what common shareholders ultimately hold. New common shares spread the exposure across more owners. Preferred shares can finance purchases without immediate common dilution, but they introduce a claim ahead of common equity. Cash and other assets matter too. Neither a coin count nor a single BTC per share calculation captures the entire balance sheet.

Strive’s same filing puts its effective common shares at 94,968,764 on Sept. 11 and 97,002,649 on Sept. 18. Its BTC position grew 5.42% while that share count grew 2.14%. Divide 25,000 BTC by the first share count and 26,355 BTC by the second: the result rises from about 26,324 to 27,169 satoshis per effective common share, a gain of 3.21%.

That increase is smaller than the 5.42% rise in the treasury because the denominator changed. It is still positive. An argument that the Bitcoin purchase was entirely offset by common share dilution would be contradicted by these particular snapshots.

Strive defines effective common shares as its Class A plus Class B shares. Its filing separately reports assumed fully diluted shares, options, employee awards and traditional warrants. Using assumed fully diluted shares instead produces approximately 25,474 sats per share on Sept. 11 and 26,317 on Sept. 18, an increase of roughly 3.31%. The filing excludes traditional warrants from that fully diluted count. These are transparent exposure ratios, not liquidation values or a substitute for Strive’s own reported performance measures.

Four weeks of filings show the change beneath Strive’s BTC total

A single week can make a young treasury look exceptionally fast. The longer series offers a better test. Strive’s Aug. 31,Sept. 8,Sept. 14 and Sept. 21 filings report both BTC holdings and share counts for consecutive dates. The calculations below divide reported BTC by reported effective common shares and multiply by 100 million to express the result in sats.

Strive added 4,999 BTC between Aug. 21 and Sept. 18. The arithmetic is 26,355 minus 21,356, equal to 4,999 BTC, or 23.4% of its starting position. Its effective common share count rose by 7,319,226, or 8.2%. Dividing the two end point BTC per share figures gives a gain of about 14.1%. The sequence was positive at each reported weekly snapshot, including weeks when the common share count rose substantially.

The company paid for the four disclosed BTC batches at average prices of approximately $79,431, $79,281, $77,954 and $79,475, inclusive of expenses. Multiplying each batch by its reported average gives roughly $393 million in aggregate purchase cost. That total is an estimate because each average is rounded in the filings. It is not a reconciliation of all funding inflows and outflows.

There is a second denominator. SATA preferred shares outstanding rose by 2,913,345 during the same four weeks, from 8,270,815 to 11,184,160, or about 35.2%. These preferred shares are not common shares, so adding them to the common share denominator would be misleading. Their holders nevertheless have contractual rights that rank ahead of common equity. A growing BTC per common share figure therefore answers one question while leaving the cost of financing open.

Preferred shares put the two companies on different sides of a trade

Strategy’s STRC is variable rate perpetual preferred stock with a $100 stated amount. Strive owns 505,000 STRC shares, a position it marked at $49.748 million on Sept. 18. Strategy has been repurchasing its own STRC while Strive’s holdings of the security remained constant across the filings reviewed. The price of Strive’s position changed, but its share count did not.

Strive has meanwhile expanded SATA, its own variable rate preferred security. SATA outstanding rose by 786,194 shares during the latest week even as Strive bought 1,355 BTC. In the week ended Sept. 11, SATA rose by 402,541 shares while effective common shares barely moved. Earlier Strive’s SATA funding arrangements described proceeds from the preferred program as the financing source for its 469 BTC purchase in that period.

The share count changes in the latest filing do not, by themselves, show exactly which day’s issuance paid for which Bitcoin trade. Cash is pooled and transaction timing can differ. Strive ended the Sept. 18 period with $229.6 million in cash and equivalents, up from $204.2 million a week earlier, despite buying more than $107 million in Bitcoin at its reported average price. The combined cash and asset changes show why treating a purchase as an isolated transfer from one security to another would overstate what the filing proves.

Strategy’s own STRC preferred stock repurchases have had a different immediate purpose: reducing outstanding preferred claims. STRC carried a 12% annualized dividend rate for September, while Strive’s SATA carried 13%, according to the companies’ September disclosures described in that coverage. Dividends are subject to the securities’ terms, and a simple rate comparison cannot measure either issuer’s total financing cost. It does show why issuing a preferred share and buying one back are different uses of capital even if both companies are Bitcoin treasuries.

At the $100 stated amount, 2,913,345 additional SATA shares represent approximately $291.3 million in additional stated preferred capital over the four reporting weeks. That is not a claim that Strive raised exactly $291.3 million in cash: offering prices, transaction costs and any other changes must be checked separately. Applying a 13% annual rate to that incremental stated amount yields roughly $37.9 million per year at an unchanged rate and share count. SATA’s rate is variable, so this is an illustrative run rate, not a fixed future bill.

Strategy’s scale changes what a restart can accomplish

Strategy held roughly 32 times Strive’s 26,355 BTC at the latest disclosed dates. Buying 1,355 BTC would add just 0.16% to Strategy’s starting position of 845,050 BTC. For Strive, the same batch represented 5.42% of its 25,000 BTC starting position. A smaller treasury can show faster percentage growth with a purchase far below the largest issuer’s historical deal size.

The reverse is true of capital needs. To expand its 846,000 BTC position by 5%, Strategy would need 42,300 BTC. At the $79,670 average price it paid in the latest week, that would cost roughly $3.37 billion before any change in price or execution costs. Strive’s 5.42% weekly expansion required 1,355 BTC and roughly $107.7 million at its stated average. This comparison fixes prices solely to make scale visible. It does not forecast either company’s next purchase.

Strategy’s ability to raise capital should not be inferred from the last zero issuance week alone. Its Aug. 31 share financed purchase preceded the two week pause. The SEC filing for that earlier period says the company directed $369.7 million of MSTR issuance proceeds into Bitcoin. It has used the mechanism recently; its absence in the latest filing is an observed choice for that period, not proof that the market has permanently closed.

There is a shareholder benefit in the latest cash funded purchase. Because the company reported no ATM sales for the week, the 950 additional BTC did not come with new common shares sold under those programs. The filing, however, does not give a fresh, directly comparable end of week MSTR diluted share count alongside the Bitcoin disclosure. Assigning a precise BTC per MSTR share increase from this filing alone would mix sources and methodologies. For Strategy, the verified measure here is treasury growth of 0.112% without reported ATM issuance that week.

The strongest case for each company is narrower than the headline

Strategy could have sensible reasons to use cash for both Bitcoin and STRC. Retiring preferred stock can reduce future dividend claims, especially when it trades below its $100 stated amount. A large cash reserve gives management options during a difficult market. Strategy’s filing reports approximately $5.04 billion in its USD Reserve after the latest payments and $1.05 billion in USD Cash after its Bitcoin and STRC purchases. Both figures have distinct stated purposes and should not be collapsed into one discretionary balance.

Strive’s own filings support a positive reading of its accumulation. Its BTC per effective common share increased on every weekly snapshot in the series reviewed, despite growth in the common share count. Its latest cash balance rose even as the treasury expanded. The September SATA financing coverage points to another potential advantage: raising preferred capital can reduce the need for simultaneous common stock sales for a given purchase.

But the preferred claim does not disappear because it sits outside the BTC per common share calculation. At Sept. 18, Strive had 11.18 million SATA shares outstanding. Strive’s common shareholders own a residual claim after the preferred rights and other liabilities are accounted for. BTC per share is a useful operating measure of accumulation; it is not a promise that each share could be redeemed for that quantity of BTC.

The companies are not in a controlled experiment. Their share prices, issuance terms, existing holdings, cash assets and preferred obligations differ. The reporting windows overlap substantially but are not identical: Strive reports through Sept. 18 and Strategy through Sept. 20. The 48 times weekly growth ratio measures a defined change in treasury size. It cannot rank the long term value of either company’s common stock.

What the numbers settle and what they leave open

The SEC filings confirm three separate developments. Strategy resumed buying Bitcoin without reporting an ATM sale for the latest week. Strive bought more BTC in its overlapping period and increased both its effective common shares and SATA shares. Across four consecutive weekly snapshots, Strive’s BTC per effective common share rose 14.1% even after the growth in common shares.

The filings do not prove that all Strive purchases were funded exclusively by SATA issuance, that the preferred financing will be profitable, or that Strategy’s financing channel will remain idle. The illustrative SATA dividend calculation does not account for future rate changes or redemptions. The BTC per share series does not subtract cash, operating liabilities or senior claims. It tests a narrower proposition: whether reported BTC accumulation outpaced the growth in reported effective common shares during the selected period. It did.

Nor does the series support saying every Strategy imitator continued buying. It measures Strive, which disclosed purchases in each of the four reporting weeks, against Strategy, which disclosed two inactive weeks and one cash funded purchase. The proposed sector wide claim would require a defined sample of other public treasuries, their dated filings and the same calculation for each. Strive is one counterexample to a uniform pause, not proof of a universal trend.

For the earlier financing loop to be observable again at Strategy, a subsequent filing would need to show fresh securities issuance linked to BTC purchases. For Strive’s current run to persist on these measures, BTC per effective common share would need to keep rising while its preferred obligations remain financeable on the terms disclosed. A week of common issuance that outruns BTC growth would reverse the first measure. A change in SATA’s dividend rate or market price would change the economics of the second.

What to watch in the next filings

Strategy ATM sales. Its weekly Form 8-K reports whether shares were sold and, when applicable, how proceeds were used. New issuance funding BTC would identify a different sort of restart from the latest cash purchase.

Strategy USD Cash and USD Reserve. The Sept. 20 balances were approximately $1.05 billion and $5.04 billion. Subsequent changes will show whether cash purchases and security repurchases continue without replenishment.

Strive BTC per effective common share. Divide BTC held by Class A plus Class B shares at each dated snapshot. The Sept. 18 reference point is approximately 27,169 sats.

SATA shares and dividend rate. Strive reported 11,184,160 SATA shares on Sept. 18. Both the outstanding count and the announced variable rate determine the scale of the preferred claim.

STRC repurchases and Strive’s STRC holding. Strategy bought back 1,771,238 STRC shares in the latest period; Strive still held 505,000. The next filings can show whether those positions keep moving in opposite directions.

FAQ

Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Figures reflect regulatory filings and reporting available at the time of writing and change with each disclosure. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security or asset. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of September 15, 2026.