ByNina Bambysheva,
Forbes Staff.
On October 10, MSCI, the world’s second-largest index provider, floated a proposal that immediately dealt a sharp blow to a small but fast-growing corporate category: digital asset treasury firms.
MSCI suggested reclassifying these unique public companies, whose primary business activity is holding bitcoin or other digital assets, as “funds” rather than operating companies. Under the draft, if a firm’s digital asset holdings exceed 50% of its total assets, it could be removed from its benchmarks. Hundreds of public companies holding over $180 billion in crypto now consider themselves digital asset treasuries, so it’s no wonder that the news sent jitters across the market.
For the biggest bitcoin treasury, Michael Saylor’s Strategy, the news was like a gut punch. Its shares fell about 20% after the announcement’s release. Indexes tracking or mimicking MSCI’s products, including the Nasdaq-100, hold about $9 billion of the company’s $54 billion market cap, including $2.8 billion tied specifically to MSCI’s indexes.
