Crypto
Strategy's Bitcoin Is Underwater as Its MSCI Exit Nears
Bitcoin fell to about $68,200 on November 13, 2026, roughly 10% below Strategy's $75,456 average cost, as MSCI prepares to drop the stock on November 30.
Michael Saylor's company spent five years and about $64 billion turning itself into the largest corporate holder of bitcoin. This week the two numbers that define that bet moved the wrong way at once. Bitcoin fell 4.35% on Friday, November 13, to about $68,237, its lowest since August, according to CappNotes. Strategy, as the company is now called, owned 850,364 bitcoin as of November 8 at an average cost of $75,456 per coin. At Friday's price the holding was worth about 9.6% less than it cost.
The second blow was administrative. On the evening of November 11, MSCI published its November index review with Strategy on the deletion list. The removal takes effect after the close on November 30 and covers the MSCI USA index, which also takes the stock out of MSCI World and MSCI ACWI, benchmarks tracked by trillions of dollars of passive and active money. It was the first decision under a rule MSCI finalised in mid-October for "non-operating" companies, those whose value comes mainly from holding assets rather than running a business. Existing members normally get two annual reporting periods of grace; Strategy went straight to deletion.
How much selling that forces is disputed. Strategy has said funds tied to MSCI indexes hold about 13 million of its shares, roughly 3.1% of the basic count and less than one day's trading volume. JPMorgan estimated about $2.8 billion of selling from MSCI-linked funds, and up to $8.8 billion if other index providers followed, according to Yahoo Finance. S&P and Nasdaq memberships are not affected by the decision. The company called the rule discriminatory, arbitrary and misguided and asked MSCI to withdraw it.
The stock had already been sliding. It closed at $142.54 on November 4 and $122.35 on November 11, and on Friday morning traded around $110.24, down 3.64%, according to GuruFocus. Before this week, Yahoo Finance calculated that each share was backed by about $137 of bitcoin, so the stock traded at a discount to its holdings, a reversal from the large premium it carried for most of 2024 and 2025. That premium is what let Strategy sell new shares and buy more coins; a discount closes that route, because issuing stock below the value of the bitcoin behind it dilutes existing holders.
None of this forces the company to sell bitcoin. Index removal is not a delisting, and the shares stay on Nasdaq. Its debt is mostly long-dated convertible notes. What changes is the cost of new money: with bitcoin under its average cost and the shares under their asset value, the machine that bought coins on the way up has no cheap fuel. For the market, the risk is less forced selling than missing buying from the largest buyer of the past two years.
The calendar for the next three weeks is short. Bitcoin's 200-week moving average sits near $68,000, roughly where it closed on Friday. The MSCI change takes effect at the November 30 close, and index funds usually trade at or near that day's closing auction, which is when any forced selling of the stock would show up in the volume.