MSCI approves rules that could eject Strategy, Metaplanet from equity indexes

JUST IN: MSCI approves new rules that could eject bitcoin-holding companies including Strategy and Metaplanet from its equity indexes.

MSCI just approved rules that could throw Strategy out of its equity indexes.

The index provider signed off on new criteria aimed at companies whose real business is hoarding bitcoin, and the blast radius includes the biggest names in the game. Michael Saylor's Strategy, the largest corporate bitcoin holder on earth, and Japan's Metaplanet, which ran the same playbook on the Tokyo market.

Here's why that stings. Index funds don't pick stocks, they buy whatever the index says. Saylor turned his company into a bitcoin wrapper, and the trick worked partly because passive money had to hold it anyway. Ejection flips that in reverse, billions in automatic demand becomes automatic selling, no debate, no earnings call.

MSCI is effectively saying that if your business model is a treasury, you're not an equity in their book. And forced selling doesn't wait for sentiment, it runs on a schedule.

This is Sara White, reporting for HIT.