Sui Group Holdings (SUIG), the only Nasdaq-listed company with an official relationship with the Sui Foundation, is positioning itself to become the most economically important player in the blockchain ecosystem, according to Steven Mackintosh, the company’s chief investment officer.
Formerly known as Mill City Ventures, the US-based specialty financial firm changed its name to Sui Group Holdings in 2025 as it pivoted toward a foundation-backed digital asset treasury (DAT) strategy focused on SUI, the native token of the Sui network.
While the company continues to invest in and advise public and private companies, Mackintosh said its priority is now clear: accumulate SUI and build infrastructure that generates recurring returns for shareholders.
“Our performance will always be correlated with the price of SUI,” Mackintosh told CoinDesk in an interview. “The goal is to be the most innovative DAT on the market by integrating directly into the Sui ecosystem.”
Grow SUI treasury
Sui Group currently holds around 108 million SUI tokens, worth approximately $160 million, representing just under 3% of the circulating supply, according to Mackintosh. The company’s short-term objective is to increase this participation to 5% of the circulating float, which it described as a truly important milestone.
The company has already increased its SUI per share metric, a benchmark similar to ether per share used by Ethereum-focused treasury companies, from 1.14 to 1.34, Mackintosh said.
In a PIPE (private investment in public equity) deal completed when SUI was trading near $4.20, the treasury was valued at approximately $400 million to $450 million. Sui Group raised around $450 million, intentionally retaining around $60 million to manage market risk, a move that Mackintosh said helped avoid forced token sales during periods of volatility.
Sui Group’s digital assets are guarded and managed by Galaxy Digital (GLXY), its official asset manager.
From treasury to operating business
Mackintosh said the company is now moving beyond buying and betting on SUI to a full operating model.
The centerpiece is SuiUSDE, a native yield stablecoin created in partnership with the Sui Foundation and Ethena, which is expected to go live in February following ongoing testing. Sui Group is among the first to commercialize Ethena’s technology on a non-Ethereum network.
“Wall Street understands stablecoins much better than altcoins,” Mackintosh said. “This is an opportunity to capture that premium within public capital.”
Under the structure, 90% of the fees generated by SuiUSDE will return to Sui Group Holdings and the Sui Foundation, either to buy back SUI on the open market or to be redistributed into Sui’s native DeFi. The stablecoin is expected to be used on DeepBook, Bluefin, Navi, and decentralized exchanges (DEX) like Cetus, in addition to serving as collateral across the ecosystem.
Mackintosh said the goal is to attract the yield-hungry DeFi users who fueled Ethena’s growth on Ethereum and bring that energy to Sui, with conversations ongoing with players like Pendle.
Ethena is a DeFi protocol on Ethereum focused on creating a financial infrastructure and a crypto-native synthetic dollar that operates independently of traditional banking systems. Its flagship product is the USDe, a synthetic dollar designed to maintain a stable 1:1 peg to the US dollar using a delta-neutral hedge of crypto collateral combined with derivatives positions rather than relying on fiat reserves held in banks.
DeFi revenue and performance ambitions
Sui Group has also entered into a revenue sharing agreement with Bluefin, the leading perpetual futures DEX on Sui. The company receives a fixed percentage of trading fees, which adds a recurring revenue stream to your DAT.
“Criminals are the killer use case in crypto,” Mackintosh said. “We have gone from a company that buys and stakes SUI to an operating company that owns a stablecoin and earns income from a rogue DEX.”
Two additional ecosystem agreements are in the works, he added.
While SUI’s base yield is around 2.2%, Mackintosh said the network’s fixed supply of 10 billion tokens and fee burning mechanism make it structurally deflationary, unlike inflationary networks like Solana and Ethereum.
If Sui Group can boost its effective yield to around 6% through operating income, Mackintosh said he believes SUI per share could grow materially over the next five years, even before factoring in price appreciation.
“The combination of deflation and higher yields gives us a very compelling long-term setup,” he said.
Capital Discipline and Market Volatility
Mackintosh compared Sui Group’s approach to other DATs that have struggled amid volatility, token fire sales and convertible debt structures.
In the recent market downturn, digital asset treasuries, publicly traded companies that build core business models around holding large cryptocurrency balances, came under sustained pressure that forced some to sell parts of their cryptocurrency stacks and rethink their strategies.
Sui Group recently bought back 8.8% of its own shares and still holds around $22 million in cash, which Mackintosh said provides flexibility without forcing knee-jerk decisions.
“We have been patient, we have used cash effectively and we have not pursued financial engineering,” he said. “That discipline matters in this market.”
Looking ahead to 2026, Mackintosh said the company’s focus remains singular: making Sui Group Holdings the central economic player in the Sui ecosystem and providing public market investors with a cleaner way to access its growth.
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