What happened?
Strive, whose shares trade on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker ASST, has announced a significant expansion of its bitcoin holdings. According to available sources, the purchase was funded with money the company raised when warrant holders exercised their right to buy shares.
A warrant is a security that gives the holder the right (not the obligation) to buy a company's shares at a pre-agreed price. When the holder exercises it, the company receives cash and issues new shares. According to the reports, Strive used these proceeds to buy bitcoin.
How much bitcoin did Strive buy?
Here it is important to be precise, because the sources diverge on the numbers.
| Source | Number of BTC | Purchase value | Additional detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Block | 2,822 BTC | $235 million | $369.2 million in gross proceeds from exercising warrants |
| CryptoSlate | 3,311 BTC | $280 million | bitcoin per share rose by just 1.72% |
| Kryptonovinky.cz | 3,311 BTC | ~$280 million | average price of roughly $84,500/BTC, week of October 5 to 9 |
| Kryptonovinky.sk | 3,311 BTC | ~$280 million | largest purchase in the past nine months |
The difference between 2,822 BTC and 3,311 BTC is not small. It could reflect two differently defined periods or different ways in which individual newsrooms aggregated the company's announcement. From the available materials it is not possible to determine with certainty which figure describes one and the same transaction. We leave this uncertainty open rather than artificially merging the numbers.
Czech and Slovak reporting agree that the purchase took place in the week from October 5 to 9 and that it is the company's largest bitcoin purchase in the past nine months. The Block report is published under the date of October 14. We do not unambiguously determine the exact year from the available materials, because they do not consistently confirm it.
Why does the growth of bitcoin per share matter?
CryptoSlate points to a detail that is easily lost when looking only at absolute numbers. Even though Strive bought bitcoin worth tens of millions of dollars, gross bitcoin per effective common share rose, according to CryptoSlate, by just 1.72%.
The reason CryptoSlate gives is the following: while the company was buying bitcoin, the number of its shares was also growing, both common and preferred. Exercising warrants means issuing new shares. According to CryptoSlate, when both the number of bitcoins and the number of shares increase at the same time, the effect per shareholder is much smaller than the sheer size of the purchase suggests.
For companies built on a bitcoin accumulation strategy, the bitcoin per share metric is precisely what is key. It shows whether existing shareholders actually benefit from each purchase, or whether the benefit is diluted across a larger number of shares.
What is new about this?
Strive is among the companies that hold part of their balance sheet in bitcoin, similar to several other publicly traded firms in the US. This particular purchase stands out for two things: its size (the largest in the past nine months) and the way it was funded (from the exercise of warrants, rather than, say, from ordinary operating cash or a bond sale).
The Block specifically cites $369.2 million in gross proceeds from exercising traditional warrants, of which, according to it, $235 million went to bitcoin itself. According to this source, the rest of the proceeds was therefore not used on bitcoin, and the company handled it otherwise. Exactly how is not clear from the materials.
What is not known
- It is unclear whether The Block's figures (2,822 BTC / $235 million) and the other sources' figures (3,311 BTC / $280 million) describe the same or different transactions.
- The year in which the purchase took place is not unambiguously confirmed, because the sources disagree on this point.
- It is not known what Strive used the remaining portion of the warrant proceeds for, beyond the amount invested in bitcoin.
- We were unable to unambiguously confirm from the available sources the total amount of bitcoin Strive holds following this purchase.
How this type of news works in numbers
For companies that build their identity on holding bitcoin, two different figures appear side by side in the data: the absolute size of the purchase and the value attributable to a single share. In this case, $280 million (the size of the purchase according to some sources) sits alongside 1.72% (the growth of bitcoin per effective common share according to CryptoSlate). The difference between these numbers arises because the company, alongside buying bitcoin, also issued new shares from the exercise of warrants. This is a description of how the individual metrics are calculated, not an assessment of whether it is advantageous for anyone.