MSCI’s Proposed Rule Change: Moving the Goalposts to Stifle Bitcoin Innovation

In the spirit of free markets and open experimentation, corporate boards should have the freedom to allocate treasury assets as they see fit, whether in cash, bonds, gold, real estate, or Bitcoin. Capital allocation has always been a core function of corporate management, not a passive afterthought. This is a fundamental principle of capitalism: companies, like individuals, take calculated risks to preserve and grow value in an inflationary world.

Yet MSCI, one of the gatekeepers of traditional finance, is now proposing a rule change that would effectively punish companies for exercising that discretion with digital assets. By potentially reclassifying firms with more than 50% of their assets in cryptocurrencies as “funds” rather than operating companies, MSCI risks excluding pioneers like Strategy from key global equity indices. This isn’t a neutral methodology update. It functions as protectionism, reframing active balance sheet decisions as disqualifying behavior simply because they challenge legacy norms.

Strategy’s approach is bold, unconventional, and undeniably risky. To be clear, I’m skeptical of any strategy that leverages debt to amplify exposure to a volatile asset like Bitcoin. Their software business is real and legitimate (an established operating company with actual products and revenue) but critics point out that layering on massive Bitcoin holdings turns the stock into something closer to a leveraged proxy for the asset itself. This framing, however, ignores the reality that modern balance sheet management is an active business operation, not a passive holding strategy. Risk alone does not transform an operating company into a fund. Still, recent market jitters, amplified by Michael Saylor’s own warnings about potential “chaos and confusion” stemming from index exclusions, underscore how sensitive the stock can be to both Bitcoin price movements and discretionary index-provider decisions.

Importantly, skepticism about a strategy’s risk profile does not justify stripping a company of its classification. No one is forcing investors to buy Strategy shares. The market prices in the risks, and shareholders have voluntarily embraced this experiment. Holding Bitcoin as a treasury reserve is a rational response to persistent monetary debasement, something governments and central banks have engineered for decades. Companies have long diversified into hard assets, foreign currencies, commodities, or massive cash reserves without being reclassified out of equity indices. Treasury strategy has never been treated as a proxy for business legitimacy. Until now.

Read More: Strategy Challenges MSCI Digital Asset Exclusion Threatening Bitcoin Treasury Firms

MSCI’s proposal sends a chilling message: if your capital allocation strategy disrupts the status quo, the rules will change to exclude you. This isn’t about maintaining index purity; it’s about shielding legacy financial frameworks from the disruptive implications of digital assets. The consequences are not theoretical. Passive funds that track MSCI indices would be forced to sell, potentially triggering billions in mechanical outflows unrelated to fundamentals, injecting artificial volatility into markets under the guise of methodological discipline. While Strategy recently retained its place in the Nasdaq-100 (a win for market-driven inclusion) the looming MSCI decision in January threatens to reverse that logic at a global scale.

Traditional finance has a long history of resisting paradigm shifts, from dismissing the internet to slow-walking fintech adoption. Now, as Bitcoin matures into a globally recognized store of value, resistance is taking a subtler form: regulatory-like behavior via private index rules. This stifles experimentation precisely when capital markets should be adapting to new economic realities.

At Bitcoin.com, we champion self-custody, education, and open access not just for corporations, but for individuals everywhere. Free markets thrive on competition and choice, not discretionary gatekeeping. MSCI now faces a choice of its own: adapt to evolving corporate finance practices or risk growing increasingly irrelevant as markets move on without it.

Innovation won’t be contained by moving goalposts. Bitcoin’s adoption will continue, index inclusion or not.