MSCI has finalized a rule change that could strip Bitcoin treasury companies such as Michael Saylor's Strategy of their places in its widely tracked equity indexes, a move that threatens to cut off a significant source of passive investment demand for their shares.

In an announcement dated Oct. 15, the index provider said it will treat "non-operating companies" as ineligible for inclusion in the MSCI Global Investable Market Indexes, widely tracked benchmarks used by passive funds and exchange-traded products around the world. The decision implements a proposal MSCI floated in August with minor modifications and takes effect at the close of Nov. 30 as part of its scheduled November index review.

Under the new methodology, MSCI will screen for corporate issuers that lack substantial operating assets and behave more like passive investment vehicles than operating businesses. Companies that fail an initial "core screen" are then run through an exclusion test based on five financial ratios; a stock is flagged as ineligible if it trips four or more of them.

The rule is aimed squarely at firms whose balance sheets are dominated by a single asset. The model was pioneered by Saylor's Strategy — formerly MicroStrategy, and the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, with hundreds of thousands of coins — and has since been adopted by Japan's Metaplanet and a wave of imitators.

To limit index churn, MSCI built in buffers: current index constituents will be removed only if they fail the screen in each of their two most recent annual filing periods, while new additions are blocked if they fail in either of the last two. The index provider said it would publish the final list of affected companies on Nov. 11, ahead of the Nov. 30 effective date — the dates that will determine which companies stay in the indexes and which are out.

The decision also ends a temporary reprieve. As the crypto-treasury trend exploded, MSCI in 2025 froze certain index adjustments for companies whose digital-asset holdings made up 50% or more of their total assets. That interim measure is now scrapped, with all such firms assessed under the new rules.

Removal from major MSCI indexes would force the index funds and exchange-traded products that track them to sell the affected shares, since such vehicles hold the shares of the companies in the benchmarks they follow. The forced selling could pressure stock prices and shrink the premiums these companies have long commanded over the value of their crypto holdings — the gap between their market value and the worth of the coins they hold.

Saylor had previously urged MSCI to drop what he called a "discriminatory" rule that would delete Strategy from its benchmarks.

The threat has already spurred defensive maneuvers. Japan's Metaplanet recently sold 10,000 Bitcoin and bought back 11,000 to demonstrate active treasury management, while Strategy has kept accumulating, adding to its stack even as the index question loomed.