The October 10 decision by index provider MSCI on whether digital asset treasury companies count as real businesses has turned into the center of an argument about who sets the rules for where institutional money can go. MSCI’s public comment window closed September 30, the same day the Bitcoin Policy Institute published a paper taking direct aim at how the proposal was written. On the line are dozens of publicly listed companies that buy and hold Bitcoin, Ethereum or other tokens on their balance sheets, thousands of index funds’ tracking mandates, and the question of whether a benchmark provider gets to decide that a legal holding structure is not a business.
What MSCI is proposing
The proposal itself started as one thing and became another. In October 2025, MSCI put out a consultation on excluding companies whose primary business involves Bitcoin or other digital asset treasury activities from its Global Investable Market Indexes, if those holdings represent 50% or more of total assets. That first attempt drew enough pushback that by January MSCI shelved the crypto-specific version. The provider said it would instead review “non-operating companies” more broadly, language that sounds neutral but turns out to cover most of the same ground.
On August 3, MSCI returned with the wider proposal. Under it, MSCI would first assess whether a company has substantial operating assets before applying five additional financial tests. Simulation results attached to the consultation showed the method removing Strategy, Metaplanet, and uranium investment company Yellow Cake from indexes. A preliminary list published alongside the consultation placed a long set of companies with ownership in the potential outflow pool: among them Riot Platforms, Bit Digital, Semler Scientific, DeFi Dev Corp, BitFuFu, Fold Holdings, Nano Labs, K33, Convano, American Bitcoin Corp, Exodus Movement, BitMine Immersion Tech, and BitMINE parent company, with SharpLink, an Ethereum treasury firm, placed on a watchlist rather than out outright. This is the point where a change in how a category is defined stops being an accounting question and becomes a question about where passive money is allowed to sit.
The Bitcoin Policy Institute’s challenge
In a research paper titled Wall Street’s Invisible Committee, Conner Brown argued, on behalf of BPI, that MSCI’s process excludes the affected parties from the actual conversation. Between the August proposal and the September 30 comment close, the affected companies say they had little opportunity to make their case on process terms rather than outcomes.
The paper’s most cited piece of evidence is not a policy argument but a technical one. BPI pointed to metadata showing that the source presentation behind MSCI’s consultation was stored in an internal folder for digital asset treasury companies. On its own, a folder name proves nothing about intent. What it does support is a question about chronology: whether the broader language in the August proposal carried forward from the earlier, shelved crypto-specific attempt, which is a different question from whether the current version is neutral on its face.
The finding “warrants asking whether its broader language carried forward” MSCI’s earlier effort to exclude digital asset treasury companies.
MSCI’s own filings describe it as maintaining and calculating indexes, not managing funds. Providers of this kind argue they are applying consistent methodology across the market, not picking winners. BPI’s position is that consistency is exactly what is absent when the tests are applied, and it asked MSCI to publish clearer and reproducible methodology showing how it defines an operating company.
Who actually gets hurt if the exclusion happens
The practical stakes land in a few different places. Most direct is the money. In 2025, analysts at JPMorgan estimated that Strategy alone could face about $2.8 billion in outflows if it were excluded from MSCI indexes. That figure scales across the broader preliminary list: a mid-cap company dropped from an index that ETFs and mutual funds track mechanically generally has fewer willing buyers on the day tracking funds rebalance, and the size of the drop depends on how much tracker money holds the name.
Beyond the immediate selloff risk is the precedent. If the tests pass, they apply not only to crypto holders but to any company holding an asset MSCI does not consider operating. Yellow Cake’s inclusion in the same simulation bucket shows how the same framework that catches Strategy would in principle catch companies holding gold, uranium, or other non-operating assets. Whether that is a feature or a bug depends entirely on where you stand on benchmark providers as the last port of call between regulation in law and allocation in portfolios.
What each side is really arguing
The argument is not only about digital asset companies. MSCI operates indexes that passive money follows at global scale, and its methodology committee decides which companies millions of investors can conveniently own through a fund. For companies that fail the tests, the effect is comparable to delisting from a venue. For the policy conversation as a whole, a private company deciding where trillions of dollars of passive money can flow without a formal rulemaking process raises the kind of accountability questions that normally land in front of regulators rather than in front of a methodology committee.
MSCI’s position, for its part, is that it does this for every asset class and has a long history of applying consistent tests across sectors. An index provider’s methodology has to draw lines somewhere or the index becomes meaningless, which buyers of index exposure are entitled to expect.
Neither side is entirely wrong on the narrow point. A company whose business model is holding a volatile asset does look different from a company making cars, and index inclusion rules around non-operating entities are not new. Bitcoin Policy Institute’s argument is narrower and harder to dismiss: that no matter what the current language says, the audience this proposal was built for has not changed, and the companies affected found that out from a metadata field rather than from MSCI telling them.
Where the decision stands
MSCI has not published a date for the final decision beyond the comment window closing on September 30, though a decision by October 10 has been circulating in coverage. In the interim, affected digital asset treasury companies remain subject to restrictions on new additions to MSCI’s indexes that were kept in place while the broader review was conducted. Whether the provider publishes a revised methodology, a split of the affected classes, or a decision to proceed as written will determine whether this fight ends with a methodology paper or moves somewhere less tidy, and the answer matters beyond crypto to any investor who assumes the index is a neutral mirror of the market.