Saylor's Strategy Fires Back at MSCI Over Bitcoin Treasury Exclusion Proposal
Strategy filed a formal letter with MSCI on Monday demanding the index provider withdraw its latest attempt to exclude Bitcoin treasury companies from its benchmarks. The letter, signed by Executive Chairman Michael Saylor and CEO Phong Le, calls the proposal discriminatory, arbitrary and misguided.
WHAT MSCI IS PROPOSING
MSCI opened a consultation on August 14 to define "non-operating companies" and screen them out of its Global Investable Market Indexes. The test starts with a core screen checking whether a company's operating assets exceed 50 percent of total assets. Companies that fail move to a five-ratio exclusion screen measuring operating asset intensity, expenses, cash flow, fair-value swings and dependence on external financing. Failing four of the five ratios makes a company ineligible, and existing index members would need to fail two consecutive annual reviews before deletion.
Run against May 2026 data, the screen would delete three companies from the MSCI ACWI IMI Index: Strategy, Japan's Metaplanet and uranium holder Yellow Cake. MSCI is accepting comments through September 30, with results expected by October 16 and any changes taking effect at the November 2026 Index Review.
STRATEGY'S PUSHBACK
Saylor and Le argue the new consultation repackages a proposal MSCI floated in 2025 that would have excluded any company holding digital assets above 50 percent of total assets. That plan was shelved in January 2026 after hundreds of organizations, including Strategy, opposed it. The letter says the new "operating" versus "non-operating" framing has no basis in US GAAP or IFRS and was built to reach the same outcome under a different name.
Strategy's core argument is that it reports its Bitcoin business as an operating segment and its Bitcoin gains and losses as operating expenses, which it says makes it an operating company under existing accounting rules. The letter states Strategy is not an investment fund or a wrapper for Bitcoin, pointing to roughly 1,500 employees and an enterprise software segment generating close to half a billion dollars in annual revenue. It also names Weyerhaeuser, Dominion Energy, Universal Music Group and Burford Capital as asset-concentrated companies the proposal would leave untouched.
WHAT'S ACTUALLY AT STAKE
Funds tracking MSCI's indexes hold roughly 3.1 percent of Strategy's outstanding shares. JPMorgan estimated in November 2025 that exclusion could trigger $2.8 billion in outflows, a figure that could climb to $11.6 billion if other index providers follow MSCI's lead. Strategy's letter argues the proposal would have no meaningful long-term impact on its business but would damage MSCI's credibility as a neutral index provider.
The letter arrived the same day Strategy disclosed it bought 4,603 Bitcoin for roughly $369.7 million between August 24 and August 30, its first purchase after weeks on the sidelines. Strategy now holds 845,050 Bitcoin. The company has also built its USD Reserve, earmarked for preferred stock dividends and debt interest, to $5.10 billion, on top of a separate $1.61 billion cash account for broader treasury use.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
This is MSCI's second attempt in less than a year to write Strategy and other Bitcoin treasury companies out of its indexes. Strategy's letter treats the fight as a test of whether Bitcoin holdings count as a real business or get dismissed as a financial instrument dressed up as one. Whether MSCI backs down again before the September 30 deadline, or lets the November review play out, decides if Strategy stays inside a benchmark tracked by roughly $21 trillion in assets.
This story comes from the Simply Bitcoin Live show. Watch the full episode.
