Strategy's 'Stretch' — the STRC preferred stock built to trade near $100 — cratered to an all-time low of $82.53 this week, and the timeline declared it the next Ponzi. Brandon and Kate dig into whether Stretch is being stretched to its limit, plus a quiet week of buys, Illinois's punishing new crypto tax, Stacks landing on Fireblocks, BlackRock's new yield ETF, and the stat that Elon is now worth more than all of Bitcoin.
In this episode of Good For Bitcoin, Brandon and Kate discuss:
- Is Stretch stretched to its limit? STRC — Strategy's 'Stretch' preferred — hit an all-time low of $82.53 Thursday, ~11% below the $100 it's built to hold. We unpack the deleveraging cascade, why it's not the Ponzi or 'next FTX' the timeline claims, and Strive CEO Matt Cole's note on how leverage feeds on itself. Brandon's take: it's like an LP token meant to hover near $100 at ~11.5% monthly — and he almost bought the dip.
- Nobody sold this week. Strategy added 1,587 BTC — its second-smallest buy of 2026 — to reach 846,842 (~4% of all Bitcoin), and Strive picked up 73 more for 19,105. Quiet, but no public seller in sight after last week's drama.
- Square now lets merchants accept Bitcoin over Lightning with one tap — auto-converting to dollars unless they opt to keep BTC. Lower friction, but spending Bitcoin is still a taxable event.
- Illinois became the first state to tax crypto at the transaction level: Gov. Pritzker's Digital Asset Tax Act puts a 0.2% levy on transfers, custody, even wallet-to-wallet moves, starting January 2027. Critics call it the most punitive digital asset tax in the country; a legal challenge looks likely.
- Stacks went live on Fireblocks, opening Bitcoin DeFi to 2,400+ institutions through custody they already trust — sBTC, dual stacking for BTC yield, and lending via Hermetica and more — removing a major institutional deal-breaker.
- Quick hits: BlackRock launched BITA, a covered-call 'Bitcoin Premium Income' ETF targeting 15–25% yield while keeping most of BTC's upside — beating Goldman to market. And Elon Musk's net worth (~$1.4T after SpaceX's surge) now tops Bitcoin's entire market cap.
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