Strategy Responds to MSCI and Urges it to keep Bitcoin Companies in Global Indexes

Source: ETHNews Original Title: Strategy Responds to MSCI and Urges it to keep Bitcoin Companies in Global Indexes Original Link: Michael Saylor’s company Strategy has formally responded to MSCI’s consultation on “digital asset treasury companies” (DATs), warning that a proposed exclusion rule would be harmful, discriminatory, and out of step with U.S. policy.

MSCI is considering making any company ineligible for its Global Investable Market Indexes if digital assets account for 50% or more of its total assets. That change would directly target firms like Strategy, whose Bitcoin holdings form a large part of their balance sheets.

Strategy: DATs are operating businesses, not passive funds

In its letter, Strategy argues that the proposal rests on a basic misunderstanding of what DATs do.

The company stresses that it is not an investment fund or a simple “wrapper” for Bitcoin. Instead, it describes itself as an operating business that actively uses its Bitcoin reserve to create returns for shareholders.

Strategy highlights its Bitcoin-backed “digital credit” program, which issues a range of equity and fixed-income securities tied to its treasury strategy. Proceeds from these offerings are used to buy more Bitcoin, in a model the firm compares to the way banks and insurers earn a spread between funding costs and asset returns.

Because management can continually adapt how it uses its Bitcoin stack, Strategy says investors are buying its business model and execution, not just raw exposure to BTC. The company notes that this is similar to how oil majors, REITs, or timber companies concentrate assets in one sector without being treated as funds.

50% digital-asset threshold called discriminatory and unworkable

Strategy’s second major criticism focuses on the proposed 50% balance-sheet cutoff. The company calls it “discriminatory, arbitrary, and unworkable.”

According to the letter, many listed firms already hold highly concentrated asset bases: oil producers with reserves, gold miners, real-estate groups, and media companies with content libraries. Singling out only digital assets for a hard threshold would, in Strategy’s view, unfairly penalize one technology while leaving others untouched.

The firm also warns that volatile crypto prices and differing accounting standards would create constant index “whiplash,” with companies moving in and out of MSCI benchmarks as market values fluctuate. Under U.S. GAAP, Bitcoin is marked at fair value, while some international DATs record digital assets at cost under IFRS, potentially letting similar balance sheets be treated very differently.

Implementing and policing such a rule, Strategy argues, would force MSCI into quasi-regulatory audits of corporate balance sheets, undermining the stability and clarity its indices are supposed to provide.

Fears of policy bias and conflict with U.S. digital-asset strategy

Strategy also questions whether the proposal is compatible with MSCI’s stated mission of maintaining neutral, representative indices.

MSCI has long marketed its benchmarks as “exhaustive” measures of equity markets that do not express value judgments on particular sectors. Creating a digital-asset-specific exclusion would, Strategy says, blur that neutrality and risk turning MSCI into an arbiter of which business models are acceptable.

The letter places this in a broader political context. It points to the current U.S. administration’s push to make the country a leader in digital-asset innovation, including the creation of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and efforts to open 401(k) plans to alternative assets. Excluding DATs from major indices would, according to Strategy, push capital away from the sector and directly conflict with those national priorities.

Analysts have already estimated that Strategy alone could face billions of dollars in potential outflows if removed from large passive products tracking MSCI benchmarks, the company notes.

Call for MSCI to stay neutral and extend its review

Strategy closes by urging MSCI to drop the proposal entirely or, at minimum, extend and deepen the consultation before making any decision.

The firm compares digital-asset treasuries to earlier transformative technologies such as oil, telecommunications, and semiconductors, arguing that markets—not index providers—should decide which models survive.

For MSCI, Strategy says, the “wiser course” is to remain neutral, allow the digital-asset ecosystem to mature, and let its indices continue to reflect the full evolution of global equity markets rather than pre-emptively excluding a fast-growing corner of corporate finance.