Matt Cole, the CEO of Strive Inc, a bitcoin treasury company listed on Nasdaq under the ticker ASST, said the company could potentially end 2026 as the second largest public corporate holder of Bitcoin, but only if certain outstanding warrants get exercised and the company also uses more of what he calls digital credit capacity.
Speaking on the One Share podcast on Wednesday, Cole said
He does not think it is out of the realm of possibility for Strive to end the year as the number two largest Bitcoin holder. He was quick to add that this is not his main expectation, and that some things would need to go right for that to actually happen.
This comment comes right after a month where Strive was buying Bitcoin at a faster pace than usual. The company bought 3,156 BTC in August alone. According to a filing made on 31 August, the most recent weekly purchase was 1,800 BTC bought between 24 and 28 August, at an average price of 79,431 dollars per coin including fees, adding up to about 143 million dollars. This brought Strive’s total holdings up to 23,156 BTC, worth somewhere around 1.8 to 1.9 billion dollars at recent prices, and pushed the company past Bullish into fifth place among publicly listed Bitcoin holders tracked by BitcoinTreasuries.
How Cole gets to 1.4 billion dollars in buying power
Cole pointed to more than 700 million dollars worth of Strive warrants that are priced at 27 dollars each and are set to expire in mid October. If Strive’s stock trades above that 27 dollar price and warrant holders choose to exercise them by paying cash, the company would receive that cash from the strike price, and according to Cole, that money could then be used to buy more Bitcoin.
On top of that, Cole mentioned another 700 million dollars of capacity that he referred to as digital credit. What exactly this digital credit actually is remains unclear from his comments. Whether it is a credit line backed by the company’s existing Bitcoin holdings, a loan already arranged with a specific lender, or simply a theoretical figure Cole is describing as possible, is not something the podcast conversation actually clarifies. In his words, if you plug in your estimate of Bitcoin’s price for whenever the warrants get exercised, and deploy 700 million dollars into Bitcoin, and then add another 700 million dollars of digital credit capacity on top of that, you are potentially looking at 1.4 billion dollars of total buying power for Bitcoin.
It is worth noting that Strive’s stock recently hit a year to date high of 26.80 dollars, just barely under that 27 dollar warrant strike price. These warrants can only be exercised by the people holding them, Strive itself has no power to force that conversion. If the warrants simply expire without being used, that cash never actually shows up. Given that the warrants expire in mid October and this comment was made in early September, the actual window for the stock to climb above 27 dollars and stay there long enough for holders to act is fairly narrow, something that gets somewhat buried under the excitement of the bigger dollar figures being discussed.
Doing the math on the ranking
Right now, the list of public companies holding the most Bitcoin looks quite top heavy. Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, holds roughly 845,000 BTC and sits far ahead of everyone else. Twenty One Capital holds about 43,514 BTC in second place. Metaplanet holds about 43,000 BTC in third. MARA Holdings holds somewhere between 35,000 and 36,000 BTC in fourth place. Strive currently sits in fifth place with its 23,156 BTC.
That means second place is roughly 20,000 BTC ahead of where Strive currently stands. At a price of around 80,000 dollars per coin, 700 million dollars in warrant proceeds would buy somewhere around 8,000 to 9,000 BTC, and the full 1.4 billion dollars would buy somewhere around 17,000 BTC. That could close a large part of the gap, but only if several things line up at once, Bitcoin’s price needs to cooperate, the warrants actually need to get exercised, the additional credit needs to actually be raised and put to use, and companies like Twenty One, Metaplanet, and MARA would need to slow down their own buying rather than keep adding to their stacks. Cole also mentioned a rough pace of about 1,000 BTC a week as a possible run rate, though he immediately added that this may or may not actually happen.
There is also a basic assumption sitting underneath this whole plan that is worth stating plainly, everything here depends on Bitcoin’s price staying strong or rising further. If the price drops instead, warrant holders would have little reason to pay 27 dollars a share for stock that might be worth less than that on the open market, and the entire 700 million dollars in expected proceeds simply would not materialize.
It is also worth being clear that Strategy’s lead is in a completely different category altogether. There is no realistic scenario in 2026 where any warrant related move by Strive comes anywhere close to threatening Strategy’s position at the very top.
How Strive has actually been paying for its coins
Strive is an asset management company based in Dallas that adopted a Bitcoin treasury strategy under Cole’s leadership. To fund its Bitcoin purchases, the company has been selling shares gradually on the open market, using both its regular Class A common stock, ASST, and a separate variable rate preferred stock called SATA. The purchase made between 24 and 28 August was funded this same way, roughly 80 million dollars came from SATA sales and about 74 million dollars came from common stock sales, with most of that money going directly into Bitcoin, while a cash buffer was kept aside to cover future dividend payments on the preferred stock. The article does not detail what that dividend rate actually is or how large that ongoing obligation might grow as more preferred shares get issued, which is worth keeping in mind since that dividend commitment competes directly with the goal of putting fresh cash into Bitcoin.
This funding structure matters quite a bit when thinking about the number two claim. New Bitcoin holdings can arrive alongside new shares being issued at the same time, which means existing shareholders are getting their ownership stake diluted with every new purchase funded this way. Being ranked fifth, or even second, in total Bitcoin holdings does not mean much to an individual shareholder if the number of shares outstanding keeps growing right alongside it. Being the largest holder in terms of total treasury size is a fundamentally different thing from holding the most Bitcoin per individual share, and investors should keep that distinction in mind when reading headlines like this one.
Stepping back, there is a broader question worth asking here too. Strategy essentially created this entire category of public companies treating Bitcoin as a core treasury asset, and several other firms have since followed that same playbook. Whether Strive’s approach reflects a genuinely sound long term financial strategy, or is more about generating headlines and staying relevant in a trend that already has a dominant leader, is something the numbers alone cannot answer. Chasing a ranking, on its own, does not necessarily translate into real value for the people actually holding the stock.
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