How Michael Saylor replaced 'bitcoin' with 'credit'

For the five years leading up to June 2025, Michael Saylor posted to X thousands of times, consistently praising BTC while disparaging credit and emphasising the legacy financial system’s emphasis on debt.

However, a social media audit pinpoints the exact moment when he pivoted.

Starting in June 2025, Saylor began lavishing praise on fiat-denominated credit in a series of online posts that culminated in the launch of STRC.

From August 2020 to June 2025, Saylor posted 3,494 times to X, with 75.8% of those posts mentioning BTC. He mentioned credit in fewer than one in 100.

When he did, he referred to credit as an insult aimed at fiat money, which BTC intended to supplant.

However, once he reversed his stance, his change in tone wasn’t subtle.

Read more: Strategy’s STRC hit another all-time low today

More bitcoin, but way more credit

According to Saylor’s bizarre dictionary of invented terminology, BTC was now called “digital capital,” his MSTR common stock was “digital equity,” and his dividend-paying STRC was “digital credit.” 

In particular, he has emphasized STRC‘s aim of holding a USD par value while paying USD dividends. 

References to fiat were also plastered across Strategy’s website and marketing materials, USD-denominated issuances arrived in a steady drip of dilution, and Saylor sold Strike with a special convertability bonus if the USD price of MSTR rallied high enough.

Strife and Stride launched with fiat dividends and USD credit seniority in the case of a bankruptcy.

STRC permanently ended the dominance of BTC in Saylor’s posts to X as credit- and debt-engineering vocabulary displaced BTC.

For a few months, things seemed to be going well. STRC held its $100 par value intermittently from October 2025 through May 2026.

Then, this month, the bottom fell out.

STRC, alongside MSTR, hit a series of new lows, eventually falling to $71.25, a terrifying 29% below where it should have been trading. 

MSTR hit $82 last week, down $375 from its 52-week high.

Fiat games continue with BTC-branded dilution

While Saylor kept posting credit-focused quips on social media, investors read the fine print on Saylor’s debt engineering.

STRC, despite its marketing lingo, isn’t actually a corporate bond. What’s more, the company isn’t required to hold any assets to back it, offers shareholders no redemption rights at its $100 par value, and pledges no BTC as collateral.

Unlike many traditional credit products, Strategy provides no FDIC, SIPC, nor any type of insurance against losses incurred by its shares falling in price.

STRC is, after all, just a stock that the company has relententlessly diluted alongside its MSTR shareholders.

Saylor stopped calling BTC digital money. Instead, he simply called it a capital asset that, in his view, should compound near 30% a year, even though its actual five-year compounded annual growth rate through mid-2026 is closer to 12%.

As BTC underperformed, Saylor’s stocks performed even worse.

The stress test for Saylor’s de-emphasis of BTC has arrived in full force this summer. BTC has more than halved from its peak above $126,000, and Strategy’s common stock has shed 78% of its value over the past 12 months. 

This month, the company’s enterprise value slipped below the value of its BTC for the first time. Worse, it made its first voluntary BTC sale since December 2022, breaking multiple years of guidance from Saylor that Strategy didn’t plan to sell BTC. 

As shares cratered, Saylor posted that he remained focused on BTC, despite his obvious focus on credit.

STRC, Saylor’s flagship “credit” product that is supposed to trade at $100, opened for trading today at $81.

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