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MSCI's own simulation drops Strategy and Metaplanet as non-operating companies
MSCI's Aug. 3 proposal to drop "non-operating companies" from its indexes would remove Strategy and Metaplanet, according to MSCI's own simulation. JPMorgan analysts put Strategy's potential outflows from benchmark-tracking funds at about $2.8 billion in 2025.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- A Bitcoin Policy Institute paper, Wall Street's Invisible Committee, cites metadata showing the presentation behind MSCI's consultation sat in an internal folder for digital asset treasury companies.
- MSCI had proposed excluding digital asset treasury companies in 2025, then shelved the plan in January after pushback and said it would review non-operating companies more broadly.
- The new method first asks whether a company has substantial operating assets, then applies five additional financial tests.
- BPI notes that "operating assets" is not a standardized balance-sheet category under US GAAP or IFRS.
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Why it matters
- constraint A deferral would not reopen index demand for the affected treasury companies, since MSCI's interim limits on new additions stay in force while the review runs.
- exposure BPI argues that mines and satellite networks, businesses that can carry large assets and outside financing for years before revenue, could fail the same first screen as Strategy.
- decision MSCI has to choose between publishing clearer, reproducible criteria, as BPI asks, and keeping a first screen whose asset classifications only MSCI makes.
MSCI announced this lineage itself in January [1]. A source presentation stored in a treasury-company folder [3] fits the sequence the company made public. The Bitcoin Policy Institute's claim is narrower than a charge of renaming: it said the finding "warrants asking whether its broader language carried forward" MSCI's earlier effort to exclude digital asset treasury companies [4]. MSCI had not answered Cointelegraph's request for comment by publication [8].
The simulation results tell you more than the folder name does. The same simulation that removes Strategy and Metaplanet also removes Yellow Cake, a uranium investment company [6]. MSCI says the test is meant to identify companies whose value comes mainly from accumulating assets instead of from revenue-generating operations [10]. A uranium holder fits that description as well as a bitcoin holder does. Yellow Cake is MSCI's best evidence that the screen reaches beyond crypto, and it is one name.
For the cash, the question is who has to hold the shares. JPMorgan's 2025 outflow estimate is about 20 times the $143 million Strategy spent on 1,665 bitcoin in a purchase Cointelegraph reported [7][16][1]. A deletion would not touch the 847,666 bitcoin Strategy holds [16]. It would change which funds are obliged to own the stock, and the price at which other buyers take the shares those funds sell [18].
MSCI can adopt the method as simulated, with removals at its November 2026 Index Review [17]. It can rewrite the operating-asset screen after the feedback round. Or it can defer. I think the rule as drafted is the January exclusion with a uranium company added. The folder confirms a history MSCI disclosed when it shelved the first plan [1][3]. The view is wrong if MSCI's final run removes more asset-heavy companies outside crypto. It holds if the list that comes out of the feedback round is still the three names in MSCI's current simulation [6].
What to watch
- MSCI's results, due on or before Oct. 16 after feedback closed Sept. 30, and whether the operating-asset screen survives unchanged.
- Any MSCI reply to the folder metadata cited in the Bitcoin Policy Institute paper.