MSCI Confirms Strategy's Removal From Global Stock Indexes Over New Bitcoin Treasury Rule

MSCI confirmed on November 11 that it will remove Strategy, the Nasdaq-listed company formerly known as MicroStrategy, from the MSCI USA Index and its other Global Investable Market Indexes. Metaplanet, a Tokyo-listed bitcoin treasury firm, will be dropped from MSCI's Japan Small Cap Index. Both removals take effect at the close of trading on November 30, with the rebalanced indexes going live December 1, according to filings reported by The Block.

The decision caps more than a year of back-and-forth between MSCI and the growing roster of publicly traded companies that hold large bitcoin reserves on their balance sheets. MSCI first proposed excluding firms with more than half their assets in digital currencies in October 2025, then reversed course in February 2026 and said it would not implement that narrower rule, keeping Strategy and its peers eligible. The index provider instead opened a broader consultation on how to treat "non-operating" companies in general — firms whose balance sheets are dominated by a single asset rather than an active business. That consultation, adopted in October 2026, screens companies against five financial measures and their operating assets over their two most recent annual filing periods; a company that fails the screen in both periods faces removal.

Strategy and Metaplanet are the two companies named in this round of deletions. Sharplink, an Ethereum treasury company that had been flagged as an exclusion risk earlier this year, was not included in MSCI's November small-cap review. MSCI's review documents gave no company-specific reasoning for the removals, pointing only to the new eligibility screen.

Strategy's stock fell about 2.6% in after-hours trading to $119.06 following the announcement. Metaplanet shares had already closed down 2.53% at 231 yen in Tokyo earlier Wednesday, ahead of MSCI's confirmation. Strategy has said index-tracking funds hold roughly 13 million of its shares, about 3.1% of shares outstanding — the portion that passive funds will now need to sell to stay aligned with the rebalanced indexes. JPMorgan estimates that selling at roughly $2.8 billion from MSCI-tracking funds alone, a figure the bank says could climb to as much as $8.8 billion if other major index providers, including Nasdaq, adopt similar non-operating-company rules.

Executive Chairman Michael Saylor and President and CEO Phong Le have publicly opposed the change, calling the treatment of digital asset treasury companies "discriminatory." In a September letter to MSCI, Strategy argued that exclusion would not meaningfully affect its underlying business but would damage MSCI's credibility as a neutral index provider.

The removal doesn't touch Strategy's roughly $70 billion-plus bitcoin holdings directly — MSCI's rule is about index eligibility, not corporate structure or asset ownership. The real exposure is to the financing machine behind those purchases: Strategy has funded much of its bitcoin accumulation through at-the-market equity sales and convertible notes, both of which get easier and cheaper when a stock sits inside major benchmark indexes and the passive-fund demand that comes with it. Losing that status raises Strategy's cost of capital just as rival index providers weigh whether to follow MSCI's lead, and it sets a precedent other bitcoin and ether treasury companies — a group that expanded rapidly through 2025 and 2026 — will now have to plan around.