A serious conflict is brewing in the world of institutional finance. Strategy, a company known for its aggressive bitcoin accumulation strategy, has openly opposed a new proposal from MSCI, one of the leading stock index providers. The essence of the initiative, which Strategy calls nothing less than "discriminatory and arbitrary," is to tighten the rules for selecting issuers for inclusion in index baskets.
The mechanism proposed by MSCI suggests that if less than half of a company's assets are not directly related to its core business, such an issuer may be subject to additional review. The result of this review could be exclusion from the indices, which automatically means losing capital inflows from passive funds that track these benchmarks.
What makes the situation particularly piquant is that in a test application of the new criteria, two companies whose business is inextricably linked to the cryptocurrency market came under fire. These are Strategy itself and Japan's Metaplanet. Both companies have bet on bitcoin as a key element of their strategy, which is obviously why they ended up in the "gray zone" of the new regulation. In addition, SharpLink, a company whose activities also raise questions for MSCI, was added to the watchlist.
The discussion process for the proposal is in an active phase: MSCI is accepting feedback from market participants until September 30. The final decision on changing the criteria is planned to be announced by October 16. This gives interested parties, including Strategy, the opportunity to try to adjust or even block the initiative.
From my point of view, this conflict goes far beyond formal procedures. It exposes a fundamental problem: traditional financial institutions, which created their rules in the era of classic business models, are facing a new class of companies whose capitalization and strategy are built around digital assets. If MSCI pushes through its criteria, it will create a dangerous precedent that could limit crypto-oriented companies' access to global capital markets. The question is not whether these companies meet formal criteria, but whether traditional indices are ready to recognize bitcoin strategies as a full-fledged and legitimate part of the modern economy.