Wall Street Turns Bullish on Strive: Why Analysts Now See Up to $38 Ahead

Wall Street is increasingly turning bullish on Strive (ASST), with a string of recent price-target hikes pointing to growing conviction in the company's Bitcoin acquisition model.

In recent months, the Vivek Ramaswamy-backed company, led by Chairman and CEO Matt Cole, has accelerated its Bitcoin acquisition machine, leaning almost entirely on perpetual preferred equity rather than debt to fund every additional coin.

The latest formal disclosure pushed Strive's holdings to 15,391 BTC after a 382 Bitcoin purchase between May 13 and May 18 at an average price of about $79,348 per Bitcoin. At Bitcoin's current spot price of roughly $77,464, that treasury is worth approximately $1.19 billion, and the position now ranks #9 among public corporate Bitcoin holders, ahead of #10 Hut 8 (13,696 BTC) by roughly 1,695 BTC. Because Hut 8 is a miner that periodically sells production while Strive accumulates, the gap is likely to keep widening structurally, not just from individual purchases.

The pace has since gone vertical. In the week that followed, Strive's SATA preferred stock is estimated to have funded an additional 794 BTC of purchases — more than doubling its prior weekly record — with the figure derived from SATA issuance flows rather than a formal 8-K disclosure. The print was striking enough to prompt Michael Saylor himself to call SATA "the most interesting story in Bitcoin right now."

Despite year-to-date gains of roughly 24% and the stock recently trading around $18, many observers continue to question why shares haven't re-rated more aggressively alongside the expanding treasury. The apparent disconnect reflects how the market is still digesting Strive's transformation from a niche anti-ESG asset manager into a hybrid Bitcoin treasury and digital credit company, one that combines aggressive accumulation with a non-dilutive financing toolkit anchored by its Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock, known as SATA. Following the repurchase and cancellation of subsidiary Semler Scientific's 4.25% Convertible Senior Notes due 2030, Strive now reports no outstanding debt, leaning entirely on equity-only leverage to fund Bitcoin purchases.

Several Wall Street firms have recently adjusted their outlooks upward or reaffirmed strong conviction, with price targets that increasingly reflect the belief that investors will eventually assign full or even premium value to Strive's Bitcoin holdings, layered with recognition of its capital markets innovation. Among the most ambitious calls is H.C. Wainwright's $38 target, which stands out as a bold endorsement of the company's potential to deliver outsized returns from current levels.

H.C. Wainwright: $38 and the Highest Bar on the Street

H.C. Wainwright analyst Mike Colonnese maintains a Buy rating with a $38 price target, one of the highest on Wall Street and implying roughly 109% upside from current levels. The firm derives its target by applying a 1.75x multiple to its estimated year-end 2026 net asset value of Strive's Bitcoin holdings of $2.7 billion, up from $2.5 billion previously. That multiple represents a modest premium to Strategy's three-year average market-to-net-asset-value. H.C. Wainwright forecasts Strive will end 2026 with roughly 18,017 Bitcoin, multiplied by a $150,000 per-coin year-end price assumption.

Execution is the standout factor in the firm's thesis. Despite a challenging tape, Strive has outperformed expectations in 2026 through stronger-than-anticipated SATA issuance, with one recent week's estimated 794 BTC of purchases representing more than double the company's previous weekly record. H.C. Wainwright essentially bets that Strive's model will continue compounding advantages, turning a relatively small treasury today into a high-beta proxy with asymmetric upside as Bitcoin's long-term scarcity narrative reasserts itself. Notably, the firm initially trimmed its target to $36 before raising it back to $38, attributing the upward revision to stable market-to-NAV ratios and the continued expansion of Bitcoin per share.

TD Cowen: $30 on Capital Efficiency and Daily Dividends

TD Cowen strikes a balanced middle ground with strong conviction. Analyst Lance Vitanza recently raised the target to $30 from $28 and reaffirmed a Buy rating. The target was originally set at $26 when TD Cowen initiated coverage in April 2026, then walked higher across two consecutive revisions as the firm gained confidence in Strive's capital-raising prowess.

The latest bump was driven specifically by Strive's decision to move SATA to daily dividend payments beginning June 16, 2026, while maintaining a 13.00% annualized payout rate. That structural shift is more than a marketing line: it is the first preferred stock in the U.S. capital markets engineered to pay every business day, with Strive's own data showing that monthly ex-dividend dates had become the largest non-fundamental driver of SATA's price volatility. By dissolving the monthly event into roughly 250 micro-payments per year, Strive opens the door to ETF wrappers, structured products, and tokenized cash-flow instruments that monthly-paying preferreds simply cannot support. TD Cowen views the change as a meaningful capital efficiency enhancement: the daily dividend structure should improve liquidity, broaden investor demand, and support increased SATA issuance, which in turn accelerates Bitcoin accumulation per share. The firm's stance acknowledges dilution risks inherent in a rapid-issuance model but counters that the Bitcoin yield, measured in expanding holdings per share and currently running at 18.4% year-to-date, more than compensates over time.

Maxim Group and B. Riley Round Out the Bull Camp

Maxim Group adds further weight to the bullish camp, with analyst Matthew Galinko reiterating a Buy rating and lifting his target to $28 from $20, a sharp upward revision that implies roughly 56% upside. The call underscores Strive's structural edge as the first publicly traded asset management Bitcoin treasury company, with a board and executive team Matt Cole has assembled specifically around Bitcoin treasury management, capital markets, and policy.

B. Riley Securities offers the most conservative of the bullish takes. Analyst Fedor Shabalin raised the firm's target to $20 from $19 while keeping a Buy rating. The print was broadly consistent with the firm's prior expectations, with the modest revision reflecting a measured macro-sensitive baseline that still sees clear upside from current levels. B. Riley's view plays well against H.C. Wainwright's higher bar by focusing on near-term fundamentals: even without aggressive Bitcoin price assumptions, Strive's preferred-equity flywheel and clean balance sheet warrant a higher multiple than the market is currently applying.

What the Spectrum of Targets Reveals

These diverging yet collectively upward targets reveal Wall Street's maturing appreciation for Strive as more than a fledgling Bitcoin treasury wannabe. The company functions as a deliberate Bitcoin development vehicle, where the treasury is paired with an equity-only leverage model and a yield-bearing preferred share that has scaled to billions in interest within a short period. Traditional valuation metrics struggle here because the legacy asset management business, still operating roughly 13 ETFs and a direct indexing platform, now plays a supporting role to the balance sheet's compounding potential.

The spectrum of forecasts tells its own compelling narrative. B. Riley's $20 with Fedor Shabalin serves as a grounded, macro-sensitive anchor that still sees meaningful upside. Maxim Group's $28 with Matthew Galinko and TD Cowen's $30 with Lance Vitanza incorporate greater faith in operational ingenuity, the SATA capital-raising engine, and Bitcoin's trajectory. H.C. Wainwright's $38 with Mike Colonnese pushes furthest by fully embracing the leverage embedded in the preferred-equity model, the first-mover status among asset-management-backed treasuries, and the compounding Bitcoin-per-share gains.

Skeptics will highlight the stock's punishing drawdown over the past year and argue for direct Bitcoin ownership instead. But the bulls respond that Strive delivers a different set of benefits: a debt-free balance sheet, a perpetual preferred instrument with no maturity wall, exposure to Strategy's own STRC preferred (Strive holds roughly $50 million of MSTR's Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock), and a management team explicitly building toward what CEO Matt Cole describes as a consolidating Bitcoin treasury landscape where only operators with clear strategies and scale will survive.

The Takeaway

Ultimately, the building bullishness stems from recognition that Strive isn't just participating in the Bitcoin treasury story. It is actively shaping a distinct chapter through equity-only leverage, daily-dividend preferred shares, and a willingness to acquire other Bitcoin treasury businesses outright, as it did with Semler Scientific. With Saylor publicly endorsing SATA, the daily-dividend mechanism going live on June 16, an estimated weekly buying record now sitting near 800 BTC, and Strive having already moved ahead of Hut 8 into the #9 spot among public corporate holders, the structural setup heading into the second half of 2026 looks materially different from the one analysts modeled even three months ago.

Whether shares climb toward $20, $28, $30, or stretch all the way to $38 and beyond will depend on Bitcoin's path, the continued strength of SATA issuance, and the market's willingness to reward a hybrid model that mixes asset management roots with Saylor-style accumulation discipline. For now, the analysts are voting with raised targets and Buy ratings across the board, suggesting the current price action understates the strategic build-out unfolding in Dallas. Investors who continue to dismiss the shift may soon wonder why they didn't get positioned sooner as Wall Street's conviction in Strive continues to compound, much like the Bitcoin per share it's quietly stacking week after week.