Strategy Challenges MSCI Plan to Exclude Digital Asset Treasury Firms from Key Indexes

An investment strategy is pushing back against a major index provider's attempt to sideline crypto-native companies. The move sets up a clash over what qualifies as a 'legitimate' treasury asset in modern finance.

The Exclusion Play

MSCI, the global index giant, wants to keep firms with significant digital asset holdings out of its flagship indexes. Their reasoning? Crypto is too volatile, too opaque—simply too 'risky' for mainstream institutional portfolios. It's a classic gatekeeping move from an old-guard institution.

Counter-Strategy Emerges

Now, a dedicated investment strategy is formally challenging that plan. The argument is straightforward: corporate treasuries holding Bitcoin or Ethereum are managing a 21st-century asset, not a speculative gamble. Excluding them punishes innovation and ignores a fundamental shift in balance sheet management.

Why This Fight Matters

Index inclusion isn't just about prestige—it dictates billions in passive fund flows. Getting booted from a major index can trigger massive, automatic sell-offs. This fight is about more than classification; it's about determining who gets access to cheap, steady capital in the public markets.

The Bigger Picture

The challenge exposes a deep rift. Traditional finance views crypto as a threat to its carefully ordered system. Crypto advocates see that same system as slow, exclusionary, and desperately in need of disruption. One side sees risk; the other sees future-proofing.

It's a high-stakes standoff. Will the indexes adapt to a changing asset landscape, or will they cling to definitions written before Satoshi's whitepaper? The outcome will signal whether institutional finance is ready to move beyond treating digital assets as a curiosity—or if it prefers the comfort of its own outdated spreadsheets. After all, nothing protects a legacy fee structure like a well-placed rulebook.

“DATs Are Operating Companies, Not Investment Funds”

The core of Strategy’s argument is that DATs like itself are operating businesses, not passive investment funds. Strategy stresses that it does not simply sit on a bitcoin hoard; instead, it runs a Bitcoin-backed corporate treasury and capital markets program, issuing a range of equity and fixed-income instruments that provide investors with varying degrees of Bitcoin exposure.

It compares this model to banks and insurers that capture a spread between financing costs and returns on underlying assets.

The company notes that many traditional firms—such as oil majors, REITs, timber companies and media groups—are also heavily concentrated in a single asset type, yet are not treated as funds or excluded from indices. Singling out digital-asset-heavy balance sheets, it says, would be discriminatory and inconsistent.

Strategy Warns of Index Instability and Policy Bias

Strategy contends that MSCI’s proposed 50% digital asset threshold is both arbitrary and unworkable. Given crypto price volatility and divergent accounting standards (GAAP vs. IFRS), companies could “whipsaw on and off” MSCI indices as market values fluctuate, undermining index stability and investor confidence.

The letter also accuses MSCI of improperly injecting policy judgments into index construction, departing from its stated role as a neutral provider of “exhaustive” benchmarks that reflect market evolution rather than deeming certain business models “good or bad.”

Excluding DATs, Strategy argues, would structurally under-represent a fast-growing segment of the economy and call into question the neutrality of MSCI’s indices.

Conflict with U.S. Digital Asset Strategy and Call for Extended Review

Strategy further argues that the proposal conflicts with the current U.S. administration’s pro-innovation digital asset agenda, including initiatives like a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and efforts to expand access to digital assets in retirement plans.

Excluding DATs from major benchmarks, the company says, would choke off access to passive capital, chill innovation, and weaken U.S. competitiveness in a strategically important sector.

Concluding, Strategy urges MSCI to reject the proposal outright or, at minimum, extend the consultation and undertake a longer, more deliberate review as digital asset treasury models continue to mature. “The wiser course,” the letter states, “is for MSCI to remain neutral and let the markets decide the course of DATs.”