Friday, November 12th

• MSCI will remove Strategy and Metaplanet from its indexes

• Hot CPI pushes Bitcoin to its lowest level since August

• MARA sells 13,597 BTC to retire all $750M of its bitcoin-backed loans.

• Warren is set to chair Senate Banking 

• NYSE taps Avalanche to settle its planned 24/7 tokenized stock platform.

Market Prices

Markets: Bitcoin traded near $73,660 on Thursday, down 9.4% from the Nov. 4 close. The driver was rates. October CPI rose 0.4% month over month against a 0.3% forecast, and after the release CME FedWatch priced an 85.3% chance of a 25bp December hike. ETF buyers stepped back with the tape: spot Bitcoin ETFs shed $1.58B in November through Nov. 10. Sentiment followed, with the Fear and Greed Index at 28.

Market Updates

MARA Sells 13,597 BTC to Clear Its Debt

MARA disclosed the sale in its 10-Q and reframed the business around power: "Our strategy now is simple: maximize the value of every megawatt we control."

• Sold 13,597 BTC for about $1.1B to repay all $750M of dollar loans at roughly 7.5% floating and 7.65% fixed, freeing 17,477 BTC of pledged collateral.

Warren Set to Chair Senate Banking

Democrats took both chambers on Nov. 3, and Stifel expects Warren to "launch targeted investigations into crypto firms."

• The CLARITY Act already failed a Senate cloture vote in September, and as chair, Warren would control which bills get a markup.

NYSE Picks Avalanche for Tokenized Settlement

Ava Labs said Avalanche will be the "core ledger technology" for the clearing firm behind NYSE's planned tokenized securities platform, citing its "24/7 atomic settlement."

• Securities can be issued across multiple blockchains, with access through participating broker-dealers; the platform still needs regulatory approval.

Why It Matters

Each story shows institutions deciding where Bitcoin belongs. MARA chose to retire dollar loans backed by its Bitcoin, removing the mismatch between what it owed and what secured it. Washington is likely headed for gridlock, leaving the industry without clear rules for another two years. NYSE is building on-chain anyway. The common thread: capital is moving away from Bitcoin that sits idle on a balance sheet and toward blockchain that does real work inside the financial system.

By The Numbers

$31.89/PH/day

Hashprice fell 2.8% week over week, below its 30-day average of $35.73. Miners are unplugging: the 7-day hashrate average dropped 7.8% to 979 EH/s, and Luxor estimates a 6.5% difficulty cut on Nov. 13.

$13.97B

Tokenized U.S. Treasuries slipped 6.29% over 30 days across 123 products. Franklin Templeton's Benji ($3.3B) and Ondo ($3.2B) remain the two largest platforms.

$656M

Crypto liquidations in the 24 hours to Thursday morning, per CoinGlass, as Bitcoin broke below $72,000. More than $555M were longs, and over 122,000 traders were liquidated.

The Deep Dive

MSCI Shows Strategy the Door

The Signal

MSCI's November 2026 Index Review will remove Strategy from the MSCI USA Index and Metaplanet from the MSCI Japan Small Cap Index, effective at the Nov. 30 close. These are the first deletions under the non-operating company screen MSCI adopted Oct. 15. The bigger story is the precedent. One of the world's largest benchmark providers has written a rule that separates companies that hold assets from companies that operate, and treasury companies built on accumulation alone now have to clear it.

The Numbers

What Changed

• Late 2025: MSCI proposed excluding companies with digital assets at 50% or more of total assets, then dropped the plan in January.

• Oct. 15: MSCI adopted a broader screen. Companies with operating assets at or below 50% of total assets face five financial ratios, and failing four or more makes them ineligible.

• The two-period rule cuts both ways: a current constituent is removed only if it fails in both of its two most recent annual periods, while a new company is blocked if it fails in either.

• Nov. 11: the final list also removed Yellow Cake, Skel Fjarfestingafelag, Agronomics and Upexi.

The Read

• Immediate impact: Strategy says deletion "would have no meaningful impact on Strategy's business." The business, maybe. The funding model, no: index funds were a steady buyer of the stock Strategy sells to buy Bitcoin.

• Long-term precedent: the screen doesn't mention Bitcoin, so any treasury company with thin operations, in any asset, faces the same test.

• Going forward: Metaplanet sold bitcoin last quarter to prove liquidity, but liquidity isn't productive activity. Holding is no longer enough. Capital markets will reward Bitcoin that is put to work.

Watch Next

• MSTR volume and price into the Nov. 30 rebalance

• Whether other index providers adopt similar screens, the trigger for JPMorgan's $8.8B scenario

• Whether new treasury companies build around operating businesses to stay index-eligible

Maestro Updates

The Maestro Institutional FAQ

Allocators ask us the same four questions about Bitcoin yield:

• What's generating it?

• Who has custody of the BTC?

• How does it compare to staking or holding an ETF?

• What could go wrong?

So we wrote it all down. The Maestro Institutional FAQ answers each one.

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