MSCI Rewrote the Rules to Kick Out Bitcoin Treasuries. They Left the Receipts in the File Name.

From Yesterday's Simply Bitcoin Live | Episode 1615

The Numbers

Bitcoin clawed back above $82,000 this week after briefly dipping under $80,000 on a hot inflation print.

The News

MSCI finalized rules Thursday that make "non-operating companies" ineligible for its Global Investable Market Indexes, the framework that could remove Strategy and Metaplanet. The final list of affected companies lands November 11, with removal effective at the close of November 30.

JPMorgan estimates Strategy's exclusion could trigger about $2.8 billion in outflows from MSTR stock. That hits the shares, not the Bitcoin. Index funds would be forced to dump their MSTR positions, not Strategy's actual BTC holdings.

Strategy already trades close to $1.8 billion a day on a normal Friday. A forced $2.8 billion dump is a rough session, not a death blow, and the hosts floated it as a buying opportunity if it actually hits that hard.

Strategy doesn't need MSCI's stamp of approval anymore, it just needed the liquidity to survive losing it.

The Bitcoin Policy Institute's new report, "Wall Street's Invisible Committee," found an internal file path buried in the metadata of MSCI's public consultation document: "Projects/DATCOs/Operating vs Non Operating." MSCI tried to exclude digital asset treasury companies outright in 2025, hit pushback, and shelved it.

This year it came back with a version that never says Bitcoin by name, just "non-operating companies." MSCI's own simulation still excludes Strategy, Metaplanet, and Yellow Cake, the same companies the original DATCO proposal was built to catch.

An index provider that calls itself objective left its own targeting folder in the file name.

The Culture

Block's Proto division brought its immersion cooled hashboards to market for the first time this week, sold through Sazmining after a year long closed beta with a publicly traded mining company. It is the first time immersion cooling, previously reserved for large industrial operators, has been available at the individual hashboard level.

Sazmining's Kent Halliburton says the real story is decentralization. Bitmain controls roughly 70% of ASIC hardware production today, the same kind of concentration that lets just two mining pools control about 47% of Bitcoin's total hash rate. Breaking either chokehold, hardware or pools, is the harder, less visible fight for a decentralized network.

Two mining pools already control close to half of Bitcoin's hash rate. One company making 70% of the chips is the same problem wearing a different hat.