Late on Wednesday MSCI, the company whose indexes the big index funds copy, published its November review. Strategy, Michael Saylor's bitcoin-holding company, is out from 1 December. Its Japanese equivalent Metaplanet is out too, and so is Yellow Cake, a British company that holds uranium.

MSCI's reason is a new rule for companies it thinks look more like investment funds than businesses. Strategy had called the rule "discriminatory" against companies that hold digital assets. It lost the argument.

A fund that copies an MSCI index has to sell whatever leaves it. Strategy itself has warned that index funds would have to sell about $2.8 billion of its shares, and JPMorgan put the figure at $8.8 billion if other index providers follow.

The shares fell 2.5% after hours. SharpLink, which holds ether, went on MSCI's watchlist.

The funds sell Strategy's shares, and Strategy keeps its 850,364 coins. The risk sits in how it pays for them. It sells new shares and preferred stock, and a share that index funds are obliged to dump is a harder thing to sell more of.

Strategy had already slowed its buying. In the week to 8 November it spent $81.9 million on 1,036 bitcoin and $188.3 million buying back its own preferred shares. By Ecoinometrics' count Strive, the other large corporate buyer, has gone from more than 6,000 bitcoin a week to 29.

Bitcoin is $73,476 this morning, about $2,000 below the $75,456 Strategy paid on average. If you hold it, the two companies that bought the most of it over the past two years are buying almost none now, and from 1 December the biggest of them has index funds selling its shares at the same time as it tries to sell new ones.

BitMine, the company Tom Lee chairs and the largest corporate holder of ether, reported a net loss of $6.3 billion for its fiscal year to 31 August. Most of it came from the price of ether, which fell about 44% over the year, from about $4,390 to about $2,466.

At the end of August it held about 5.9 million ETH, 3.97 million of them bought during the year. It has kept buying since, and last week reported 6.07 million.

It's the first full year of results from a company built to buy ether and hold it, and the number is a loss. Ether is $2,043 this morning, 17% below where BitMine's year ended.

If you own ether, its biggest steady buyer pays for coins by selling its own shares, and it has just told those shareholders it lost $6.3 billion.

On Wednesday Deutsche Bank switched on its crypto custody service for paying clients, institutions and companies in Europe. It holds bitcoin, ether and stablecoins for them.

The same day Israel Discount Bank said its customers will be able to buy, hold and sell bitcoin and ether inside its mobile app from 26 November. Bank Leumi announced a similar service first but isn't expected to run it before early 2027.

Nomura, Japan's largest brokerage, is going the other way. Bloomberg reported that it's exploring a sale of Laser Digital, its crypto arm, and has talked to Marex Group among others. The unit's losses pushed Nomura's European business into a quarterly loss, and Nomura may still keep it.

If you hold crypto, the buyers now arriving are bank customers who come a few at a time, and the ones leaving were companies that bought billions at a go.