Credit Page Field Guide
Bitcoin-collateralized preferred instruments don't fit the old vocabulary. Here's what each column on the /credit page measures, why it was built, and what it tells you that standard preferred analysis misses.
Bitcoin treasury preferred instruments are a new asset class with no standard naming convention. STRK, STRF, STRD, STRC, STRE -- these don't map to anything in traditional preferred stock analysis. The instrument column anchors every other data point to a specific, tradeable security.
The exact security and its exchange ticker so you can price it, trade it, or model it. A STRF row and a STRK row are different instruments with different rights, different risk, and different implications for common equity -- even though they're issued by the same company against the same treasury.
A preferred from Strategy (720K+ BTC) is a structurally different credit than a preferred from a company with 5K BTC. The issuer column connects each instrument to the treasury that backs it -- so BTC Rating and Coverage are always read in context of who issued it, not in isolation.
The size and quality of the collateral pool before you look at any specific metric. A multi-year track record of treasury growth is a different credit than a recent accumulator. Issuer is the first filter in any credit assessment -- the number that follows only means something relative to who's behind it.
Preferred stock is not monolithic. Within a single issuer's preferred stack, seniority determines who gets paid first in a liquidation, whose dividend has priority, and which series faces the most risk of non-payment when cash gets tight. Without seniority, you can't read the other columns correctly.
Your position in the recovery sequence. STRF is most senior among Strategy's preferreds -- it gets paid before STRC, before STRE, before STRK, before STRD. At STRD (most junior), you're last among preferred holders, one step above common equity. Same BTC reserve, very different risk depending on where you stand.
This is the raw size of the claim -- what the preferred holder is entitled to in a wind-down before any residual value flows to common equity. It directly drives drag, BTC Rating, and coverage calculations. Without it, no other credit metric is computable.
How much of the BTC treasury is pre-committed to this instrument. A $2B liquidation preference at $90K BTC means roughly 22,222 BTC is reserved for this series alone. Stack all the preferred series together and you get the total senior claims figure that CEBE subtracts. Liquidation preference is where the math starts.
Rate alone is not enough -- but it's the starting point for everything downstream. The dividend rate tells you the annual cost being charged against the BTC treasury for each series. Combined with face value it gives you the annual dollar obligation. Combined with BTC price it gives you BTC consumed per year per series.
The cost of this layer of the capital structure, before payment type modifies how that cost hits the company. STRF at 10% fixed is a defined, predictable claim. STRC is variable -- it resets monthly, so the rate here reflects the current period only. That distinction matters enormously for cash flow modeling.
Cumulative preferred means unpaid dividends accumulate as arrears -- they must be paid in full before any common dividend can be declared and before the company can retire the preferred. Non-cumulative means missed payments are gone. This single distinction changes the risk profile of the instrument entirely.
Whether underpayment risk is recoverable or permanent. For cumulative instruments, a cash crunch defers and grows the obligation. For non-cumulative, a missed period is forgiven. STRF is cumulative (arrears grow). STRD is non-cumulative (missed = waived). That gap matters in a bear market where BTC falls and cash is tight.
Payment type determines what common equity actually loses. Cash-only dividends drain reserves -- shrinking the cash offset that reduces drag. Share-payable dividends dilute common shareholders directly, reducing CEBE per share even if BTC holdings grow. These are fundamentally different risk mechanisms and produce wrong conclusions when mixed.
Which pool of shareholder value is being tapped. Cash-only (STRF, STRC, STRE): the company needs cash to survive the obligation -- when cash runs dry, the structure breaks. Share-payable (STRK, STRD): common equity absorbs dilution continuously. Both matter. They just matter differently depending on what you own.
The three columns below have no direct equivalent in traditional preferred stock analysis. They exist because Bitcoin-collateralized preferred is a new asset class -- one where the underlying reserve is volatile, appreciates asymmetrically, and is denominated in a non-fiat unit. Standard coverage ratios assume stable collateral. These columns don't.
BTC Rating is the credit investor's version of drag -- the same number, read from the opposite direction. Higher rating = more coverage = safer instrument. It answers: if this company liquidated BTC to settle all preferred claims today, how much cushion exists? Introduced by Saylor at Strategy World 2026 -- we implement it per-instrument and in aggregate.
The safety margin in the language credit markets understand. A BTC Rating of 3.4x means the treasury is worth 3.4x total preferred claims -- substantial cushion. A rating of 1.1x means a 10% BTC price drop puts preferred holders at risk. This is the number a fixed income analyst asks for first, translated into Bitcoin-native terms.
Coverage ratios are abstract. Break-even translates the risk into a price level you can evaluate against your own BTC thesis. If you believe BTC doesn't drop below $30K, a preferred with a $22K break-even is a different risk than one with a $55K break-even. The number turns an abstraction into a concrete decision threshold.
The BTC price at which treasury value equals total claims -- common equity is wiped and preferred is now fully collateralized by the entire reserve. Below break-even, preferred holders absorb loss too. This is the liquidation floor that any credit analysis of a Bitcoin treasury company must establish before any other number is meaningful.
This column carries an insight with no analog in traditional credit: fiat-denominated claims compress as BTC rises, BTC-denominated claims do not. A $100M preferred at $50K BTC represents 2 BTC of claim. At $500K BTC, it's only 0.2 BTC. BTC-denominated claims stay fixed in Bitcoin regardless of price. Same dollar face value, completely different collateral dynamics.
Whether your coverage improves automatically as BTC appreciates, or whether it stays fixed. For credit investors, fiat-denominated preferred in a Bitcoin treasury is structurally self-improving in bull markets. BTC-denominated instruments don't benefit from this. Denomination is the first structural question in any BTCTC credit assessment.
Traditional preferred stock analysis was built for stable-collateral issuers. Bitcoin treasury preferred is issued against an asset that can 10x in a cycle and lose 80% in a bear market. These columns exist because that asymmetry demands a new analytical vocabulary.
Credit Sees Coverage. Equity Sees Ownership.
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