MSCI’s crypto treasury rules could spur $15B of forced selling

Crypto treasury companies could be forced to sell as much as $15 billion in crypto if the Morgan Stanley Capital International Index (MSCI) goes ahead and excludes them from its indexes. 

BitcoinForCorporations, a group campaigning against MSCI’s proposal, projected outflows of between $10 and $15 billion based on a “verified preliminary list” of 39 companies with $113 billion in total float-adjusted market capitalization.

It added that JPMorgan’s analysis estimated that Michael Saylor’s Strategy could see $2.8 billion in outflows if it were removed from the MSCI. The Bitcoin treasury firm represents 74.5% of the total impacted float-adjusted market cap.

Analysts calculated potential outflows could total $11.6 billion across all impacted companies. Such a large outflow would put more selling pressure on crypto markets, which have already been trending downward for almost three months.

The BitcoinForCorporations petition letter had 1,268 signatures at the time of writing.

Balance sheet not a fair metric

The MSCI announced in October that it was consulting with the investment community about whether to exclude crypto treasury companies that have the majority of their balance sheet in crypto. 

MSCI’s indexes serve as critical benchmarks that determine which companies passive investment funds must hold, making inclusion decisions highly consequential for companies’ access to capital.

However, BitcoinForCorporations said that a balance sheet metric is unfair for judging a company. 

“A single balance sheet metric cannot reflect whether a company is an operating business. The rule would remove companies even when their customers, revenue, operations, and business model remain unchanged.”

They added that MSCI should “withdraw the proposal and continue to classify companies based on their actual business model, financial performance, and operational characteristics.”

MSCI’s final conclusions will be announced by Jan. 15, and proposed implementation will be included in the February 2026 Index Review.

Growing objections to the proposal 

Several large industry players have recently voiced their objections to the MSCI proposal.

On Dec. 5, Nasdaq-listed Strive urged the MSCI to “let the market decide” whether they want to include Bitcoin-holding companies in their passive investments.

A few days later, Strategy stated in a letter that the proposed policy change would bias the MSCI against crypto as an asset class, rather than the index company acting as a neutral arbiter.