Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy has sharply criticized Morgan Stanley Capital International’s draft rule to drop it from its Global Investable Market Indexes, describing the move as “misguided” and “flawed.”
In a Monday letter addressed to MSCI, Michael Saylor, founder of the Nasdaq-traded Bitcoin powerhouse, alongside CEO Phong Le, stated that the index creator is displaying prejudice toward digital asset enterprises.
MSCI indicated earlier in the month that it was seeking feedback on an initiative to categorize “non-operating companies” and bar them from entry into its Global Investable Market Indexes. Dropping these corporations would shut entities like Strategy out of benchmarks monitored by vast numbers of institutional capital allocators.
Strategy responded today to MSCI’s proposed “non-operating company” exclusion. While not material to $MSTR, the proposal is misguided, flawed, and conflicts with established securities laws and accounting principles. Read our letter and share your support: https://t.co/Vup3T5TbvY
— Strategy (@Strategy) August 31, 2026
This recent initiative by MSCI follows a 2025 consultation where the provider considered barring any firm whose digital asset reserves accounted for 50% or greater of its overall balance sheet assets.
“MSCI’s continued effort to discriminate against digital assets is misguided and calls into question MSCI’s neutrality and reliability,” Strategy’s formal comment letter stated.
The letter continued: “The proposal, like the 2025 proposal that MSCI withdrew, is discriminatory, arbitrary, and misguided. If adopted, the proposal would have no meaningful impact on Strategy’s business, but it would profoundly harm MSCI’s reputation as a reliable and neutral index provider. Like the 2025 proposal, the current proposal should be withdrawn.”
Strategy maintained that MSCI is utilizing ungrounded frameworks to categorize Bitcoin as a “non-operating” holding. The organization pointed out that it accounts for its Bitcoin division as an operating unit and files its Bitcoin profits and losses directly as operating expenses.
The corporation noted that MSCI’s framework to single out “non-operating companies” was “arbitrary and unexplained,” functioning merely as a tactic to single out digital asset treasury corporations unfairly.
Strategy also emphasized its status as a functional operating firm, maintaining an international workforce of 1,500 staff members while putting its Bitcoin reserves to active use to “create shareholder value.”
Strategy — previously known as MicroStrategy — is a software enterprise that shifted its core strategy toward accumulating and custodying bitcoin back in 2020. Having initially purchased the crypto asset as a hedge for its equity holders, it went on an aggressive buying trajectory to become the foremost institutional holder of the digital coin, managing 845,050 bitcoins valued at $65.8 billion based on current market rates.
Market participants frequently purchase Strategy’s equity on the Nasdaq (MSTR) as a vehicle for amplified exposure to bitcoin’s market trajectory.
On Monday, shares of MSTR finished the session with a 4% gain. Across the current year, the equity has dropped by 15%.
Originally published at https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/bitcoin-treasury-strategy-opposes-msci.
