The methodology makes companies that mainly hold investments rather than run a business ineligible for MSCI's Global Investable Market Indexes, replacing last year's interim treatment of digital asset holders. The list of deletions is due November 11, and by Strategy's own August count index funds hold about 3.1% of its shares.
MSCI will adopt the methodology it proposed in August that makes non-operating companies ineligible for its Global Investable Market Indexes, the index provider said on Thursday. The rule decides whether companies whose main asset is a pile of bitcoin stay in the benchmarks that passive funds track. CoinDesk's account puts the list of affected companies on November 11, with deletions taking effect at the close of trading on November 30.
The screen has two steps. MSCI first asks whether a company holds substantial assets tied to an operating business. A company that fails that test is then measured against five financial ratios covering expenses, cash flow, changes in asset values and reliance on outside financing, and failing four or more of the five makes it ineligible. None of the reports publishes the ratio formulas or the numerical cutoffs, so how close any particular company sits to the line is not public information.
Two buffers slow the mechanism down in both directions. A company already in an index is removed only if it fails the screen in each of its two most recent annual filing periods, and a company outside one is blocked from joining if it fails in either of its two most recent periods. The Block reports that MSCI can also use a company's most recent interim filing where one exists. The stated purpose is to keep index turnover down rather than to move companies in and out on a single bad year.
The framework replaces the interim treatment MSCI announced in October 2025 for companies whose digital assets were half or more of their total assets. That measure, as CoinDesk describes it, froze increases in their index share counts and postponed additions and moves between size segments. From the November review those companies are assessed under the new rules instead.
The distinction matters, because the adopted test is not about owning bitcoin. It is about whether a listed company runs a business at all. When MSCI ran the screen against May 2026 data, the companies it flagged for possible removal from the ACWI Investable Market Index were Strategy, Metaplanet and Yellow Cake, a UK uranium investment company. Cointelegraph reports a further watchlist of SharpLink, Ton Strategy Company, Solana Company and DeFi Development Corp. That simulation used figures five months old, and MSCI has not yet published the list that counts.
The number attached to Strategy's possible exclusion is JPMorgan's estimate of about $2.8 billion in selling, which has been cited since late 2025. Cointelegraph notes that the estimate was made against MSCI's earlier digital asset proposal rather than the methodology adopted on Thursday, which is a different test with different buffers. Strategy's own count, given in August, is that funds tracking the indexes hold roughly 13 million of its shares, or 3.1% of basic shares outstanding, and that this is less than one day's trading volume.
Those two figures are closer than they look. Thirteen million shares at Thursday's closing price of $151.29 is about $2.0 billion, although the share count is Strategy's August figure and the price is this week's, so the comparison mixes inputs from different dates. Neither figure says how quickly index funds would have to sell, and none of the reports gives a time frame.
What index selling cannot reach is the bitcoin. Strategy holds 848,250 coins, worth about $69.67 billion according to the Bitcoin Treasuries figures CoinDesk cites, and an index deletion changes who owns the equity rather than what the company owns. The equity has already repriced heavily without any index decision: MSTR closed at $151.29 on Thursday, around 72% below its November 2024 high of $543, and Metaplanet closed at 277 yen on Friday against a peak of 1,930 yen in June 2025, on the TradingView data in the same report.
Strategy has fought the proposal since the summer. The Block reports that Michael Saylor and chief executive Phong Le called it discriminatory against digital asset treasury companies on September 1, and that a company letter in September argued the change would have no meaningful effect on its business while damaging MSCI's reputation.
The company has spent the year reworking the financing side of the model rather than the holdings. It put its preferred dividend schedule to a shareholder vote in September, moving record dates from four or 24 a year to 365, and its August purchase of 4,603 coins left it holding fewer bitcoin than it did in June after buybacks and dividends took most of a $602.8 million stock sale.
Index eligibility is a second-order problem for a sector already trading below the value of its own assets. Galaxy Digital warned in April that at least five crypto treasury companies faced asset sales or closure as discounts to net asset value widened, and Twenty One wrote $402 million off its bitcoin book in the second quarter, with its new chief executive telling shareholders the pure-holder model was finished. Losing a benchmark slot removes a source of demand that never depended on any of that.
Nothing has been deleted yet. MSCI has adopted a framework and set two dates, and the thresholds that decide which companies fail it have not been published.
