Standard Chartered maintained its end-2026 Bitcoin price forecast of $100,000 in a note to investors on Friday, arguing that the recent weakness reflects a failure by Strategy to explain a strategic shift rather than any deterioration in the companyâs balance sheet.
Geoffrey Kendrick, the bankâs global head of digital assets research, wrote that Strategy â the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, with 843,775 coins, more than 4% of the 21 million that will ever exist â âappears to be pivoting from its ânever sell Bitcoinâ mantra to a more complex approach.âÂ
Clear communication of that pivot, he wrote, will determine how fast the pressure on BTC lifts.
Between 2020 and mid-2025, Strategyâs mNAV â enterprise value divided by the value of its Bitcoin â traded above 1.0. That premium lets the company issue shares, buy Bitcoin, and grow its value by more than the value of the new stock. Convincing the market it would never sell was the load-bearing part of the model.
With mNAV near 1.0, that arithmetic no longer works. Kendrick said Strategy is pivoting toward holding Bitcoin as backing for STRC, its perpetual preferred stock, which functions as a credit product.
The STRC feedback loop
STRC pays a 12% annual dividend, settled twice a month in cash, with the rate reset each month to keep the security near its $100 par value. It has about $10 billion notional outstanding, the largest of the instruments Strategy has deployed.
A negative feedback loop took hold once STRC broke from par, hitting an intraday low of $71.25 on June 26. The divergence began after the June 1 disclosure that Strategy had sold 32 BTC the prior week. STRC still trades near $90, according to Standard Chartered. The USD reserve for STRC dividends stands at $2.55 billion, or 17.4 months of coverage.
Bitcoin is a âscreaming buyâ
The problem with ânever sell,â Kendrick argued, is that it constrains how Bitcoin gets perceived. Strategy has announced a monetization program that lets it sell BTC from time to time, including up to $1.25 billion in proceeds for the reserve.
Given its Bitcoin backing, STRC is over-collateralized and should trade back toward $100, the note said. Kendrick compared the mechanism to a central bank promising to do âwhatever it takesâ and, through credibility, never having to act.Â
Effective signaling, he wrote, should remove the need for Strategy to sell any Bitcoin. Kendrick treats the episode as noise rather than a signal about BTCâs medium-term direction. At $64,000, he calls the coin âa screaming buy.â
Strategy sold 3,588 BTC for about $216 million last week, its largest disposal to date, using the proceeds to fund preferred stock distributions and refill the reserve. JPMorgan analysts said the formal sale policy introduces âavoidable two-way riskâ by making Strategy both buyer and seller.Â
Strategyâs stock trades near $98 on Thursday. BTC traded above $64,400 on Friday.