The key win here for $MSTR and Bitcoin DATs isn't that exclusions didn’t happen it’s that the conversation is now happening at the right institutional level.

For me, the more interesting development is why MSCI landed where it did. In its own words, MSCI acknowledged that "distinguishing between investment companies and operating companies that hold digital assets as part of their core operations requires further research and consultation with market participants"

That sentence matters far more than anything else as it confirms something many of us already know which is that Bitcoin-native businesses or balance sheets don’t fit neatly into any legacy classification framework

Some DATs clearly function as a new kind of treasury vehicle that blend OpCo w/a capital-allocation strategy tied to BTC. Others are operating companies first, and Bitcoin sits on the balance sheet because it's embedded in the product, the customer value prop, or the economic plumbing of the business.

Treating both through a single, blunt lens just mischaracterizes both.

Whether its MSCI or any other provider, these indexes sit at the center of global capital formation so when they publicly state that existing frameworks are insufficient and that additional criteria may be required its an acknowledgment that these companies are not an anomaly to be filtered out, but a category that needs to be properly understood.

This is EXACTLY how new asset classes earn legitimacy
- First, they create confusion
- Then, they force conversations
- Finally, they get frameworks built around them, not against them

DATs shouldn't be pigeonholed into traditional sectors that were never designed to accommodate digitally native scarcity and programmable money. They should be evaluated as an emerging capital-markets category, and with new metrics and expectations.

I think this is a very healthy outcome for the broader Bitcoin ecosystem as it preserves access to institutional capital, avoids premature exclusion, and keeps the feedback loop between everyone (operators, advisors, and indexes) open. That feedback loop is key. It's where the education happens and better policy eventually emerges.

I've been in the capital markets space 12 years now and markets mature because institutions are willing to say, “we need to understand this better" which is exactly what MSCI just did.

Net positive for Bitcoin, the capital markets, and for the integration of this asset class alongside every other major financial innovation that came before it.

@matthew_sigel @Werkman @btcjvs @_Adrian @ColeMacro