Strategy's expansion into Europe: why investors are not interested in the offer with a 10% dividend

Michael Saylor’s expansion into the European market met with unexpected resistance. In November 2025, Strategy released Stream (STRE), a perpetual euro-denominated preferred paper specifically designed for the European Economic Area. The product promised a 10% annual dividend and was supposed to be the European analogue of the successful American Stretch series (STRC). However, instead of the expected enthusiasm of investors, STRE faced sluggish demand and remained almost invisible in the market.

Structural Barriers: Access and Transparency as Key Barriers

Khin Oei, founder of Treasury, a Dutch company specializing in bitcoin treasury, pointed to the main reasons for the failure: limited availability and lack of transparent market data.

STRE is listed on the Luxembourg exchange Euro MTF, which does not have convenient distribution among retail investors. More significantly, Interactive Brokers — one of the world’s largest brokerage platforms — does not serve this tool. This means that a huge part of European investors simply cannot buy it, even if they wanted to.

The second problem is the lack of reliable market data and price transparency. TradingView, the most popular global asset monitoring platform, shows an STRE with a meager trading volume of just 1.3K. USD. against the background of the declared market capitalization of $ 39 billion. Such a gap between the data raises serious doubts about the liquidity of the instrument. Investors cannot estimate the true demand, do not know whether they will be able to sell the paper at a fair price, and therefore bypass it.

Contrast: Why STRC is successful in the US and STRE is stuck in Europe

Strategy managed to raise $715 million for the issuance of STRE, but only at a 20% discount from the minimum price of 80 euros per share. This is already a signal that demand was weaker than expected.

Compare this to the success of the American Stretch Series (STRC). There, the mechanics are essentially the same — preferential stocks with a high dividend — but the American market has a deep liquidity pool, perpetual traditions with similar securities, and established distribution channels. On American stock exchanges, such instruments are widely known to institutional and qualified retail investors.

Alternative platforms and a new course of expansion

According to Oei, one way to regain interest is to relist STRE to alternative platforms, including Dutch centers. This could provide better liquidity, deeper market making, tighter spreads, and wider availability for European investors. These conditions would be much more favorable for scaling the implementation of the product.

However, the question remains: will Strategy redouble its efforts in Europe as a promising growth zone, or instead concentrate on the US market, where it already has four successful series of perpetual preferred securities?

Broader Context: How the Crypto Market Copes with the Frost

The STRE debacle in Europe comes amid broader market turbulence. In January 2026, most crypto assets fell as Bitcoin slipped below $84,000 — the current level is $84.04K. Spot trading volumes in cryptocurrencies have halved, falling from $1.7 trillion last year to $900 billion, reflecting a decline in market enthusiasm.

Interestingly, other players make other bets. Pudgy Penguins, for example, is constantly solidifying its position as one of the strongest NFT-native brands. The company is moving from speculative “digital luxury goods” to a multi-departmental consumer IP platform. The ecosystem has already embraced physical and hybrid products (over $13M at retail), gaming (Pudgy Party has been downloaded over 500K times in two weeks), and the widely distributed token PENGU ($0.01 per share so far).

The Challenge for Michael Saylor: Rethinking European Strategy

Amid such eventos, Michael Saylor has previously downplayed the importance of expanding into markets such as Japan. However, the European maneuvering of STRE demonstrates that global expansions require more than just a good idea and financial resources — adaptation to local market realities is also required.

Strategy’s expansion into Europe remains a big experiment. If the company can overcome structural barriers and build a normal distribution channel, STRE can still find its investors. If Saylor decides to focus mainly on the US, where US preferential securities have numerous advantages, the European branch of this story may remain a short episode in the more ambitious plan of global dominance.