shares strategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) rose nearly 9% on Friday as Bitcoin returned to the $78,000 level.
The move comes just days after the CEO Michael Saylor He gave a keynote speech at the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas.
MSTR rose above $180 per share during Friday’s session, building on a previous close near $165. The move follows Bitcoin’s intraday advance, pushing Bitcoin to $78,961 as of Friday afternoon, according to Bitcoin Pro Magazine Data.
The rally represents a welcome respite for MSTR investors who have endured a brutal stretch — the stock is still down more than 70% from its November 2024 all-time high above $457.
the Price action It comes amid a broader rebound in bitcoin which has surged since a sharp decline to the mid-$60,000s earlier this year. Bitcoin rose above $78,000 last week as well, driven by short liquidations and improved overall sentiment following reports of progress in diplomatic negotiations between the US and Iran.
Polymarket contracts pricing BTC on May 1 showed 100% confidence that the asset will finish in the $78,000-$80,000 range.
As a leveraged proxy for Bitcoin, MSTR tends to amplify Bitcoin’s movements in both directions. The strategy currently holds approximately 818,334 Bitcoins on its balance sheet – approximately 3.9% of the total Bitcoins that will ever exist – acquired at an average cost of approximately $66,385 per coin.
SAYLOR: STRC strategy is thriving
The stock’s rise also comes on the heels of new enthusiasm generated by Saylor’s keynote at the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas last week.
Instead of focusing on Bitcoin price targets or further Bitcoin purchases, Saylor’s presentation focused on… STRC — Preferred Stocks Backed by Bitcoin in the Strategy — and an overarching thesis that digital credit is about to cannibalize trillions of dollars in the legacy credit market.
“The $300 trillion global credit market represents a much larger opportunity than the nearly $2 trillion global Bitcoin market, and Strategy has built the first product that connects the two,” Saylor said during the keynote.
STRC, which pays Monthly variable dividends rose 11.5% and trades on the Nasdaq to nearly $8.5 billion in par value in less than nine months—larger, Saylor claimed, than the entire current world of monthly-paying preferred securities combined.
“This is spreading very quickly,” he told the audience.
BlackRock’s iShares Preferred & Income Securities ETF took a roughly $210 million position in STRC.
Saylor said STRC It has funded the acquisition of approximately 77,000 bitcoins from 2026 to date, nearly ten times the net inflow of all U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs combined over the same period.
