Bitcoin Fell, We Grew 6x | The Hurdle Rate Podcast | Ep. 78
10/20/2026 · 72 min · transcript via mlx
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Key topics
— Strive closed a $700 million IPO of SATS, a 15% fixed-rate cumulative perpetual preferred stock, after strong institutional and retail demand during a volatile market week.
— The company acquired 36,818 Bitcoin over the past year—a 6.2x increase from 5,886 Bitcoin—despite a 35% decline in Bitcoin price during the same period.
— SATS is structured as a junior, fixed-rate instrument complementing SEDA (the senior perpetual preferred), creating a two-tiered capital structure designed for different investor risk and income profiles.
— The 15% fixed yield targets traditional income investors seeking stability, contrasting with SEDA's variable-rate model and addressing demand from high-net-worth and institutional investors uncomfortable with declining dividend rates.
— Strive maintained an 18-month dividend reserve and never lost access to capital markets throughout the bear market, demonstrating operational resilience and building institutional trust.
— The company positioned SATS as the first daily-dividend-paying fixed-rate security, generating real-time pricing and credit curve data to inform future capital structure decisions.
Market & price signals
— Bitcoin declined 35% from its October 2024 all-time high of $126,000 to approximately $82,000 at time of recording. Despite this drawdown, Strive's balance sheet grew approximately 500% year-over-year, with year-to-date BTC yield per share at 70.4%. The SATS IPO faced a challenging backdrop: high-yield credit spreads widened 201 basis points in one month, creating pricing pressure. However, demand exceeded $1 billion on a $700 million offering, with institutional anchor investors and significant oversubscription indicating strong appetite for Bitcoin-backed fixed-income instruments.
Actionable insights
— The treasury breakeven annual recurring revenue (ARR) metric—demonstrating that Bitcoin balance sheet growth can offset dividend obligations perpetually at modest CAGR assumptions—provides a transparent framework for evaluating digital credit risk relative to traditional corporate credit and should be monitored on Strive's dashboard as SATS trades.
— Institutional capital is flowing into Bitcoin-backed securities not because of aggressive leverage but due to broken traditional income assets (e.g., TLT down 50% since 2020) and the appeal of 24/7 transparent pricing versus quarterly corporate credit snapshots; Bitcoin holders should track whether this capital inflow thesis accelerates with SATS seasoning.
— The two-instrument capital structure (SEDA senior/variable, SATS junior/fixed) serves as a hedge against regulatory or rate-regime shifts; conservative Bitcoin investors seeking income should evaluate their risk tolerance for fixed-rate perpetual preferred equity, which has no principal maturity unlike convertible debt.
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