MSCI Consultation Would Delete Strategy and Metaplanet From Its Global Indexes Under a Non-Operating Company Screen

MSCI’s proposed screen for non-operating companies would remove Strategy and Metaplanet from its global benchmarks, with results due by mid-October.

MSCI opened a consultation this month on a proposal to treat “non-operating companies” as ineligible for its Global Investable Market Indexes, and the simulation attached to it removes the two largest publicly traded bitcoin treasuries. Applying the screen to the MSCI ACWI IMI using May 2026 data would have deleted Strategy, Japan’s Metaplanet, and UK uranium holder Yellow Cake plc.

Strategy, with a free-float-adjusted market capitalization of $23.9 billion in the simulation, is the only large-cap name flagged for deletion. SharpLink, Taiwan’s Center Laboratories, and Turkey’s Lydia Holding would land on a new public watchlist.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

The methodology works in two steps and never references digital assets. A company clears a core screen if operating assets exceed 50% of total assets. If it fails, it is measured against five ratios: operating asset intensity, expense intensity, operating cash flow, fair value intensity, and capital dependence. Tripping four of the five makes an issuer ineligible.

Existing constituents do get some protection under the proposal: they face looser thresholds than outside companies, including a 10% operating asset floor rather than 20%, and must fail the screen in two consecutive annual filings before removal.

Index membership is a funding question for these companies rather than a branding one. Passive funds tracking MSCI benchmarks buy and sell mechanically, and JPMorgan analysts estimated last year that removing Strategy from MSCI indexes could trigger about $2.8 billion in outflows. That lands at an awkward moment, because Strategy funds bitcoin purchases by issuing stock, and it paused the preferred share program at the center of that machine in June after the security fell well below par. The company has also broken from pure accumulation this year, disclosing its largest bitcoin sale on record in early July.

Strategy answered on Friday with a post on X arguing that index providers should measure markets rather than decide which assets a company may own, and that MSCI has put itself “out of step” with regulators and its own customers.

This is MSCI’s second pass at the problem. An earlier consultation targeted digital asset treasury companies directly, defined as issuers holding at least half their assets in crypto. MSCI shelved it on Jan. 6, saying treatment of those companies would stay unchanged for the time being while it examined non-operating issuers more broadly. Feedback on the new proposal closes Sept. 30, results are expected by Oct. 16, and MSCI proposes implementing any changes in the November 2026 index review.

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