PANews reported on October 1 that the Bitcoin Policy Institute released a report titled "Wall Street's Invisible Committee," questioning MSCI's proposed changes to index inclusion rules that could exclude certain Bitcoin treasury companies (Digital Asset Treasury Companies, DATCOs). The institute stated that MSCI-managed indices involve roughly $21 trillion in benchmark assets, and when index rules change, funds tracking the relevant indices may need to adjust their holdings, triggering large-scale capital reallocation.
The Bitcoin Policy Institute said that MSCI had previously proposed in 2025 to exclude digital asset treasury companies (i.e., enterprises with at least 50% of assets in digital assets), but suspended the move after encountering opposition. This year, MSCI reintroduced a broader classification standard targeting "non-operating companies," and simulations showed that the rule could exclude companies such as Strategy and Metaplanet. The institute found an internal file path containing "Projects/DATCOs/Operating vs Non Operating" in the metadata of MSCI's public consultation documents, which it said raised questions about whether the rule was designed to target digital asset companies. However, the institute also acknowledged that metadata alone cannot prove that MSCI predetermined the exclusion outcome.
In addition, the Bitcoin Policy Institute noted that MSCI published an article titled "Creeping Crypto" in 2021 discussing the impact of crypto assets entering the stock market, and examined companies' crypto asset exposure from an ESG perspective. At the same time, the institute pointed out that MSCI's management has publicly supported ESG investment principles in the past.
The Bitcoin Policy Institute believes that the "operating assets" standard MSCI intends to adopt lacks a sufficiently clear classification framework and could affect companies in emerging industries, and called for greater transparency and reproducibility in the index-setting process. The report represents the views of the Bitcoin Policy Institute, and MSCI has not yet responded to the report.