Dallas asset manager Strive bought 1,107 bitcoin for about $94.5 million between Sept. 21 and Sept. 25, lifting its total holdings to 27,462 BTC, according to a Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. The company paid an average of $85,396 per coin including fees, and values the stash at roughly $2.3 billion based on Friday’s close of $83,943.
Preferred stock pays again
Once more, most of the money came from Strive’s own capital markets machinery rather than common equity. SATA, the company’s variable-rate perpetual preferred stock, supplied 85% of the capital raised during the week, up from 57.7% the week before. Warrant exercises added another $12.4 million in gross proceeds, down from $21.2 million in the prior period.
“Warrant exercises generated another $12.4M. Including those proceeds, 85% of total capital raised came from SATA,” chief executive Matt Cole wrote on X.
The structure matters for common shareholders. SATA pays dividends but raises cash with less dilution than selling Class A shares. The filing shows the preferred share count rose by about 1 million during the week to 12.2 million, which at the $100 stated amount puts SATA’s notional value near $1.22 billion. Common shares outstanding increased by roughly 649,000.
Strive’s cash position also grew, from $229.6 million on Sept. 18 to $248.8 million a week later, even after the bitcoin spend. The company has leaned on this financing mix for months. A 469 BTC purchase earlier in September, which lifted holdings to an even 25,000 coins, was paid for entirely with SATA. A $109 million buy at the start of the month split funding 70/30 between preferred and common stock, and a 1,800 BTC purchase in late August followed the same pattern.
The race up the treasury table
Strive ranks fifth among public bitcoin holders, behind Strategy, Twenty One Capital, Metaplanet and MARA, according to Bitcoin Treasuries data. Cole has said the company could reach second place by the end of 2026, though he treats that as an outside scenario rather than his base case.
The arithmetic is unforgiving. Strive would need about 16,053 more coins to pass Twenty One’s current 43,514 BTC, assuming the Tether-backed firm stops buying altogether. With 13 full weeks left in the year, that works out to roughly 1,235 BTC per week, well above the 1,107 Strive just added and above the 1,355 from the week before. Catching MARA in fourth place is the nearer target, and the gap to that podium step is measured in hundreds of coins per week rather than thousands.
Market pricing gives Strive a margin its rivals lack. Its common stock, ASST, slipped 0.3% to $29.35 on Monday but is up nearly 70% year to date. Strategy, the original treasury pioneer run by Michael Saylor, is down 6% over the same period, and Twenty One has lost 26%. Investors have rewarded the newer entrant’s preferred-stock funding model, at least so far, on the theory that less dilution per coin bought means more value retained per share if bitcoin recovers.
Rivals keep buying too
Strive was not the only firm disclosing purchases on Monday. Strategy, the largest corporate holder, added 1,665 BTC for $142.7 million, pushing its holdings to a record 847,666 BTC. That purchase, like Strive’s, was funded largely through stock sales rather than operating cash. Tom Lee’s Bitmine Immersion bought 17,362 ETH worth about $47 million, taking its position to 4.9% of Ethereum’s total supply, a stake that would rank among the largest single holders of the second-largest crypto asset if it were an individual.
The buying comes as bitcoin itself sits near a one-week low around $83,000. Treasury firms are accumulating into weakness, a pattern that has held through September even as spot ETF flows thinned. US spot bitcoin ETFs took in about $2.39 billion in the week to Sept. 25, their best run since October 2025, but daily inflows have since collapsed to $31 million. Analysts at CryptoQuant note unrealized profit across held coins sits at a 21-month high, a level that has historically preceded distribution by long-term holders, and they point to heavy offers stacked near the $84,000 level as resistance.
What the accounting says
Fair-value swings in the bitcoin pile flow through Strive’s earnings under current accounting rules, and the 8-K does not assign a live mark-to-market value to the 27,462 coins. At Friday’s close the stash was worth about $2.3 billion, but a move of a few thousand dollars per coin swings that figure by hundreds of millions in either direction. Under the fair-value accounting standard adopted for crypto assets, those swings land directly in net income, which means a quarter of falling prices can turn a coin-accumulating firm into a paper loss report even when nothing about the holdings has changed.
Dilution is the other side of the ledger. Warrant exercises, at-the-market common sales and ongoing SATA issuance all add shares. SATA’s variable-rate dividend also costs more to service if rates stay elevated, and Treasury yields near two-decade highs make that bill heavier. The company’s bet is that coin growth outruns the carrying cost, the same wager every firm in this sector has made, with varying results depending on entry price and access to capital.
For now the strategy has delivered. Strive has grown from a small ESG-focused asset manager into the fifth-largest corporate bitcoin holder in under a year, funded mostly by instruments that did not touch the common share count. The stock’s outperformance against older treasury firms suggests the market credits the approach. The next test is whether preferred-stock demand holds up if bitcoin stays below $85,000 through the fourth quarter, and whether Cole’s second-place target proves to be ambition or arithmetic.