A stablecoin promises to hold a fixed $1 value, but STRC never made that promise. It’s a preferred stock, a class of stock that pays a certain dividend, designed to trade near $100, but with no peg to defend, so it can’t “depeg” like UST did.
“Strategy’s objective has been to support STRC’s trade at a level near $100, not to guarantee it,” Palmer said. “In our view, what happened to STRC is best described not as a depeg — something that was never fixed cannot be depegged — but as a market-driven reset of required dividends.”
UST was algorithmic and held its dollar value through a mint-and-burn loop with a sister token, LUNA, and no hard reserves behind it. As confidence broke, the loop unraveled and both dropped to near zero.
STRC has no such self-reinforcing mechanism. It is indirectly backed by Strategy’s bitcoin, which the company said Monday now has 847,363 coins worth about $54.5 billion.
However, the decline affects Strategy’s procurement engine. When STRC trades at or above $100, the company issues new shares and uses the cash to buy more bitcoin.
Below that level, the channel stops working – and explains why Strategy has paused it.
