Why MORE Matters to a UK Investor: The Currency Toll on Dollar Preferreds

On 12 January 2026 STRC closed at $100.07, its highest close since the IPO. On 26 June it closed at $74.57, with an intraday low of $71.25 — roughly a quarter of the value gone in five months. On Friday it closed at $99.65. Everyone watching that round trip was watching the dollar price. For anyone holding it from the UK there was a second price underneath it that almost nobody was charting: the pound.

The purple line is the same share priced in sterling, each day's dollar close divided by that day's GBP/USD rate. It peaked at £74.71 in January and bottomed at £56.54 in June, a fall of 24.3% against 25.5% in dollars. On that journey the exchange rate was almost a bystander — the pound slipped from 1.3394 to 1.3188 against the dollar, which cushioned a UK holder by about a point. If the pound's story ended there, this would be a short article.

Where the pound did take a bite

It doesn't end there. Over the whole period GBP/USD ranged from 1.3022 on 5 November 2025 to 1.3825 on 29 January 2026 — a 6.2% swing.

Take a UK buyer who converted pounds to dollars on 5 November and sold on 29 January, twelve weeks later. The pound strengthened by 6.2% over that stretch, so the dollars they brought home converted into 5.8% fewer pounds than they started with. STRC's dividend over the same twelve weeks was roughly 2.5% (a 10.5% rate in November, 11% in January). The currency took more than twice what the dividend paid, before the share price did anything at all. The same swing run the other way would have handed a UK holder an extra 5%, which is exactly the point: it's a coin toss sitting on top of a coupon, and the size of the coin is bigger than a few months of STRC income.

A 12% dividend can absorb a swing like that over a full year. A 4% dividend can't. I think that's the part people miss when they look at a double-digit yield: it makes the currency risk look small, but only if you hold long enough for the income to outrun it.

The toll you pay whichever way the pound moves

The part that isn't luck is the cost of converting. Platforms either charge a fee on each currency conversion or build a spread into the rate, and you cross it on the way in, on the way out, and on each dividend if it gets converted back. I don't know what yours charges, so the table below assumes 1% each way as an illustration — swap in your own number. It takes £10,000, assumes a 12% dollar dividend over a year and a flat share price, and shows what comes back in pounds.

With no fees at all and a flat pound you keep the full £1,200. A 6% rise in the pound takes £634 of that away — over half the year's dividend — and the 1% each way costs another £223 or so even if the pound sits still. The pound weakening by 6% does the opposite and hands you £715 on top. None of that has anything to do with how well Strategy runs its business. It's the cost of holding a dollar asset with pounds, and it gets bigger the shorter you hold and the lower the yield. In reality each dividend is its own conversion, so the real cost runs a little above the table.

What MORE changes

MORE, The Smarter Web Company's preferred share, is admitted to the London Stock Exchange Main Market on Wednesday 14 October. It's priced in pounds and pays in pounds: an initial 12% a year on a £100 reference value, paid weekly, cumulative, with the first payment of £0.2301 a share (ex-dividend 22 October, record date 23 October, payable by 9 November). The retail offer was £90 a share, and the raise came in at about £10 million rather than the £15–25 million first targeted. There are more detail and live numbers on the MORE hub.

For a UK holder the table above simply doesn't apply. No conversion on the way in, none on the way out, and the weekly dividend lands in the currency you spend. That's a real advantage over buying STRC, SATA, BMNP or CHAD from a UK account, and it's the reason I wanted MORE on the site rather than treating it as a footnote.

It isn't a free lunch, and the caveats cut deep. The risk moves rather than disappears: Smarter Web holds bitcoin, which is priced in dollars, and its own prospectus is blunt that an investment in the company isn't an investment in bitcoin, directly or by proxy. The dividend is only as safe as the company's ability to fund it, and the board can vary the rate within the prospectus limits and can suspend payments. The company can also redeem the shares, and holders get no vote. It's a new issuer with a raise measured in millions, a short history, and nothing yet to compare the weekly payments against. Its funding is also thin next to the others on this site — about £3.85 million of net proceeds is earmarked for working capital and dividend reserves, shared with other uses, against a dividend bill of around £1.33 million a year on the shares sold at the IPO. I'd want to see the first few weekly payments arrive on time before I called it proven.

The start of local-currency treasuries?

What interests me beyond MORE itself is the shape of it. Every treasury-company preferred I've covered so far — Strategy, Strive, Bitmine, DeFi Development Corp. — is a US company selling dollar income to the world. MORE is a British company selling sterling income to British savers, backed by the same underlying idea. If that works, there's no obvious reason it stops in London. Metaplanet in Japan unveiled its own preferred structure in November 2025: MERCURY, a convertible issued in yen to overseas institutions, and MARS, a monthly variable-rate instrument. The Tokyo listings were postponed in May 2026 over the exchange's rules on dividend sustainability, and its two most recent announcements show how it's working around that. It has agreed to buy 100% of Siiibo Securities, a licensed Type I securities firm that is due to become Metaplanet Securities on closing, expected in July. The stated aim is to build and distribute bitcoin-related yield products directly to Japanese investors, with the 40,177 BTC on Metaplanet's balance sheet behind them. It is also taking a controlling stake in Super League Enterprise (Nasdaq: SLE), to be renamed Superplanet and seeded with 2,100 BTC, as a platform for raising permanent capital in the US. Closing there is expected in Q4 2026 and needs Super League stockholder approval. As I understand it, the aim is its own preferred equity in early 2027. That isn't a date the company has confirmed in what I've read, so I'm treating it as an intention rather than a schedule, and I'm watching for the launch.

The pattern, if it takes hold, is a bitcoin-backed income product in each major currency, so that a saver in Tokyo, London or Frankfurt isn't paying a toll to hold someone else's dollars. Metaplanet is the interesting variation: it is building one balance sheet with two doors, a yen route through its Japanese securities arm and a dollar route through Superplanet, rather than a single local product. That would also split the pool of demand that today flows almost entirely into US issuers, and I don't think anyone knows yet what it does to prices. For now MORE is the first test of whether a local-currency version can actually stand up outside the US.

Where to look next

The MORE hub has the price, effective yield and dividend history once trading starts, the vs gilts tool compares it against UK gilts and savings in pounds, and the money flow page now tracks MORE's raise alongside the others. For how the dollar versions work, start with A Storm in a Teacup and the STRC hub.

I track STRC, SATA, BMNP, CHAD and MORE daily and hold positions in MSTR and ASST. I don't own MORE or Smarter Web Company (SWC) shares. MORE is brand new as I write this, so this is my early read of the offer documents rather than a settled view — check the prospectus yourself before sizing a position. Chart data is from Yahoo Finance; the fee scenarios are illustrations, not a forecast. Not financial advice.

This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. MORE is a newly issued, thinly traded instrument; its dividend is variable and may be suspended, and the figures above are drawn from the issuer's announcements as of 12 October 2026. Exchange rates move in both directions and the scenarios shown are illustrative. Tax treatment of overseas dividends is outside the scope of this article. Always consult a qualified financial adviser before making investment decisions.