Sui Group Holdings (SUIG) is the only Nasdaq-listed company with a formal relationship with the Sui Foundation, and the company is positioning itself to be the most economically important player in the blockchain ecosystem, said Chief Investment Officer Steven Mackintosh.
Formerly known as Mill City Ventures, the U.S.-based specialty finance company changed its name to Sui Group Holdings in 2025, pivoting to a foundation-backed Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) strategy centered on Sui, the native token of the Sui network.
McIntosh said that while the firm continues to invest in and advise both public and private companies, its priorities are now clear: accumulate SUI and build the infrastructure to deliver recurring benefits to shareholders.
“Our performance has always been relative to the price of SUI,” McIntosh said in an interview with CoinDesk. “Our goal is to become the most innovative DAT on the market by embedding ourselves directly into the Sui ecosystem.”
Increase funding for SUI
According to Mackintosh, Sui Group currently holds approximately 108 million SUI tokens, worth approximately $160 million, accounting for less than 3% of the circulating supply. The company’s near-term goal is to increase its shareholding to 5% of outstanding shares, which he called a very important milestone.
McIntosh said the company has increased its SUI per share metric, a benchmark similar to that used by Ethereum-focused financial firms per Ether, to 1.34 from 1.14.
In a PIPE (private equity investment) deal completed when SUI was trading near $4.20, the Treasury notes were valued at about $400-450 million. Sui Group raised about $450 million and intentionally withheld about $60 million to manage market risk, a move McIntosh said would help avoid being forced to sell tokens during periods of volatility.
Sui Group’s digital assets are hosted and managed by its official asset management company, Galaxy Digital (GLXY).
From finance to running a business
McIntosh said the company is now moving from buying and staking SUI to a full operating model.
At the center of this is SuiUSDE, a native, yield-generating stablecoin built in partnership with the Sui Foundation and Ethena that is expected to go live in February after ongoing testing. Sui Group is one of the first companies to white label Ethena technology on non-Ethereum networks.
“Wall Street understands stablecoins far better than altcoins,” McIntosh said. “This is an opportunity to capture a premium in public equity.”
Under this structure, 90% of the fees generated by SuiUSDE will flow back to Sui Group Holdings and the Sui Foundation, either by buying back SUI on the open market or redeploying into Sui’s native DeFi. The stablecoin is expected to be used on decentralized exchanges (DEX) such as DeepBook, Bluefin, Navi and Cetus, and serve as collateral for the entire ecosystem.
Mackintosh said the goal is to attract the yield-hungry DeFi users who have powered Ethena’s growth on Ethereum and bring that energy to Sui, which is currently in discussions with players such as Pendle.
Ethena is a DeFi protocol on Ethereum focused on creating crypto-native synthetic dollars and financial infrastructure that operates independently of the traditional banking system. Its flagship product is USDe, a synthetic U.S. dollar designed to maintain a stable 1:1 peg to the U.S. dollar through delta-neutral hedging of crypto collateral combined with derivatives positions, rather than relying on fiat reserves held by banks.
DeFi revenue and yield targets
Sui Group has also signed a revenue sharing agreement with Bluefin, the leading perpetual futures DEX on Sui. The company charges a fixed percentage of transaction fees to add a recurring revenue stream to its DAT.
“Perps is the killer use case in cryptocurrency,” McIntosh said. “We have transitioned from a company that purchased and staked SUI to an operating business that owns stablecoins and earns revenue from Perps DEX.”
Two other ecosystem deals are in the pipeline, he added.
While SUI’s base staking yield is about 2.2%, Mackintosh said the network’s fixed 10 billion token supply and fee consumption mechanism make it structurally deflationary, unlike inflationary networks like Solana and Ethereum.
McIntosh said that if Sui Group can increase its effective yield on operating income to about 6%, he believes SUI’s earnings per share could grow significantly over the next five years, even without factoring in price increases.
“The combination of deflation and higher yields gives us a very compelling long-term setup,” he said.
Capital discipline and market volatility
McIntosh contrasted Sui Group’s approach with other DATs struggling with volatility, forced token sales and convertible debt structures.
Amid the recent market downturn, digital asset vault companies—publicly traded companies that have built their core business models around holding large cryptocurrency balances—have come under continued pressure, forcing 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 about $22 million in cash, which McIntosh said provides flexibility without forcing knee-jerk decisions.
“We’ve been patient, we’ve used cash efficiently and we haven’t chased financial engineering,” he said. “That kind of discipline is important in this market.”
Looking ahead to 2026, McIntosh said the company’s focus remains singular: making Sui Group Holdings a core economic player in the Sui ecosystem and providing public market investors with a cleaner way to achieve its growth.
Read more: Staking goes mainstream: What 2026 will look like for Ethereum investors
