American monetary companies firm MSCI’s October session on “digital asset treasury firms” arrived at a time when the mechanics of Bitcoin (BTC) publicity had already begun to fracture.
By mid-2025, three roughly equal-sized channels funneled institutional capital into BTC: regulated spot ETFs managing north of $100 billion, mining operations with embedded BTC publicity, and a more moderen cohort of public firms whose major enterprise had change into holding crypto on their steadiness sheets.
MSCI’s proposal targets the third bucket and, in doing so, forces a reckoning over whether or not these corporations are working firms or passive funds in company costumes.
The proposal itself reads like commonplace index housekeeping.
MSCI floated excluding from its International Investable Market Indexes any firm whose digital-asset holdings exceed 50% of complete belongings, and invited suggestions on whether or not corporations that self-identify as digital asset treasuries or increase capital primarily to stack Bitcoin ought to face comparable therapy.
The session window runs via Dec. 31, with a call due Jan. 15 and implementation penciled in for the February 2026 evaluation.
MSCI frames the query explicitly: do these shares “exhibit traits much like funding funds,” which already sit outdoors fairness benchmarks?
JPMorgan answered by modeling the fallout. Its November evaluation pegged Technique’s market cap at roughly $59 billion, with about $9 billion held by passive automobiles monitoring main indexes.
In a state of affairs wherein MSCI alone reclassifies Technique, roughly $2.8 billion in passive belongings can be compelled to promote. If Russell and different suppliers observe, mechanical outflows might attain $8.8 billion, in keeping with a Barron’s estimate.
The quantity is framed because the second index shock after Technique’s earlier exclusion from the S&P 500, and it triggered a backlash. JPMorgan confronted scrutiny over front-running, with public calls to boycott the financial institution and to brief its inventory.
The proxy-stock drawback
The anger displays a deeper rigidity over how Bitcoin beta enters conventional portfolios. DLA Piper’s October advisory documented the sector’s explosive development.
Greater than 200 US public firms had adopted digital asset treasury methods by September 2025, holding an estimated $115 billion in crypto and sporting a mixed fairness market cap of round $150 billion, up from $40 billion a yr earlier.
That is roughly 190 targeted on Bitcoin treasuries, with one other 10 to twenty holding different tokens. For establishments constrained by mandates that prohibit direct crypto holdings, these shares provided a workaround: monitoring BTC via fairness publicity with out breaching compliance guardrails.
Nonetheless, that comfort got here with structural vulnerabilities. Many more recent treasuries financed their purchases via convertible notes and personal placements, and when their inventory costs fell beneath the worth of the crypto they held, boards confronted strain to promote cash and purchase again shares.
Digital asset treasuries deployed about $42.7 billion into crypto in 2025, with $22.6 billion within the third quarter. Solana-focused treasuries noticed their combination web asset worth drop from $3.5 billion to $2.1 billion, a 40% drawdown, organising compelled liquidations that would quantity to $4.3 billion to $6.4 billion if even a modest fraction of positions unwind.
On the identical time, spot Bitcoin ETFs crossed $100 billion in belongings underneath administration lower than a yr after launch, with BlackRock’s IBIT alone holding over $100 billion in BTC and roughly 6.8% of the circulating provide by late 2025.
The merchandise provided purer publicity with out balance-sheet leverage or the NAV low cost issues plaguing treasury shares.
MSCI’s session accelerates a rotation already underway. BTC publicity migrates from treasury equities, which change into compelled sellers when fairness valuations crack, into regulated ETF wrappers.
For Bitcoin itself, the rotation could be impartial and even optimistic if ETF inflows offset treasury promoting; for the shares, it’s unambiguously liquidity-negative.
For BTC dominance, it arguably reinforces Bitcoin’s structural benefit: the merchandise establishments rotate into are virtually solely BTC-only. On the identical time, some treasuries had began experimenting with Solana, Ethereum, and different tokens.
| Firm | Ticker | Function in BTC publicity | MSCI standing in DAT evaluation | Approx MSCI parent-index weight* | At-risk passive AUM (order of magnitude) | Liquidity word |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Technique | MSTR | Digital-asset treasury BTC | Flagged as core DAT candidate | ≈ 0.02% of MSCI ACWI IMI | ≈ $2.8B MSCI-linked; as much as ≈ $8–9B complete | Principal node for compelled promoting; proxy for BTC beta in equities. |
| Riot Platforms | RIOT | BTC miner / proxy inventory | Listed on preliminary DAT checklist | Very small; fill from terminal | A whole lot of tens of millions, not billions | Liquidity-sensitive; excessive ETF/thematic possession share. |
| Marathon Digital | MARA | BTC miner / proxy inventory | Listed on preliminary DAT checklist | Very small; fill from terminal | A whole lot of tens of millions, not billions | Related profile to RIOT; extra risky free float. |
| Metaplanet | 3350 | BTC treasury (Japan) | MSCI has frozen upgrades/adjustments | Tiny; small-cap / nation index | Tens of tens of millions | Non-US instance; exhibits international attain of rule. |
| Capital B and different DATs | Varied | BTC-heavy DATs / miners | On wider 30–40 identify DAT watchlist | Tiny individually | Collective “lengthy tail” | Collectively, kind a second tier of liquidity threat. |
Liquidity underneath stress
The equity-side mechanical flows are simple. Index funds benchmarked to MSCI can not exchange Technique with a Bitcoin ETF. They rotate into no matter fills the index slot.
From BTC’s perspective, that is an equity-liquidity shock, not an automated coin-selling shock, but the second-order results matter extra.
Treasury firms going through weaker fairness help and tighter funding situations will both reduce future purchases or, in some instances, liquidate holdings to shore up their steadiness sheets.
Technique has signaled it gained’t promote BTC to remain underneath any threshold; as a substitute, it’s reframing itself as a “Bitcoin-backed structured finance firm,” doubling down on the concept that it’s an working enterprise, not a fund.
Smaller treasuries with weaker steadiness sheets could lack that luxurious.
Russell and FTSE Russell haven’t launched formal consultations on digital asset treasuries, however JPMorgan’s $8.8 billion outflow state of affairs assumes different main suppliers will converge on MSCI’s therapy over time.
FTSE Russell stays deeply concerned in digital-asset indexing on the token facet. Nonetheless, its fairness methodology doesn’t but carve out treasuries as a separate class, they’re nonetheless handled like sector shares.
DLA Piper’s advisory reads as a warning that regulators and gatekeepers, together with indexers, are reviewing treasury disclosures extra intently, which helps the plausibility of a copycat wave even when it hasn’t began.
MSCI’s transfer forces establishments to resolve whether or not Bitcoin belongs in fairness benchmarks or in devoted crypto merchandise.
The session is methodological, however the stakes are structural: it determines whether or not BTC beta sits in ETFs and a handful of enormous company treasuries, or in a extra dispersed ecosystem of smaller balance-sheet holders who change into compelled sellers when markets flip.
The reply reshapes not simply index weights, however the focus of Bitcoin possession itself.