Sui Group Holdings (SUIG), the only Nasdaq-listed company with a formal relationship with the Sui Foundation, is positioning itself to become the most significant economic player in the blockchain ecosystem, according to Steven Mackintosh, the company’s chief investment officer.
Formerly known as Mill City Ventures, the US-based specialist finance company was renamed Sui Group Holdings in 2025 as it moved towards a foundation-backed digital asset treasury (DAT) strategy centered around SUI, the native token of the Sui network.
As the firm 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 return for shareholders.
“Our performance will always be correlated to 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.”
Increase SUI’s cash flow
Sui Group currently holds approximately 108 million SUI tokens, worth approximately $160 million, representing just under 3% of the circulating supply, according to Mackintosh. The company’s short-term goal is to increase this stake to 5% of the float, which he described as a very important step.
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) transaction completed when SUI was trading near $4.20, the cash was valued at between $400 million and $450 million. Sui Group raised around $450 million, intentionally withholding 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 held and managed by Galaxy Digital (GLXY), its official asset manager.
From cash flow to operations
Mackintosh said the company was now moving beyond purchasing and staking SUI to embark on a full operating model.
The centerpiece is SuiUSDE, a native yield stablecoin built in partnership with the Sui Foundation and Ethena, which is expected to go live in February after ongoing testing. Sui Group is one of the first to white label Ethena’s technology on a non-Ethereum network.
“Wall Street understands stablecoins much better than altcoins,” Mackintosh said. “It’s an opportunity to capture this premium within a public action.”
Under this structure, 90% of the fees generated by SuiUSDE will be returned to Sui Group Holdings and the Sui Foundation, either to repurchase SUI on the open market or to be redeployed into Sui-native DeFi. The stablecoin is expected to be used on DeepBook, Bluefin, Navi, and decentralized exchanges (DEXs) such as Cetus, and serve as collateral across the ecosystem.
Mackintosh said the goal was to attract the yield-hungry DeFi users who fueled Ethena’s growth on Ethereum and bring that energy to Sui, with discussions underway with players like Pendle.
Ethena is a DeFi protocol on Ethereum focused on creating a crypto-native synthetic dollar and financial infrastructure that operates independently of traditional banking systems. Its flagship product is USDe, a synthetic dollar designed to maintain a stable 1:1 peg to the US dollar using delta-neutral hedging of crypto collateral combined with derivative positions rather than relying on fiat reserves held at banks.
DeFi revenue and yield ambitions
Sui Group 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, thereby adding a recurring revenue stream to its DAT.
“Criminals are the deadliest 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 revenue from a perps DEX.”
Two other ecosystem agreements are in the works, he added.
While SUI’s base staking yield is around 2.2%, Mackintosh said the network’s fixed supply of 10 billion tokens and fee burn mechanism make it structurally deflationary, unlike inflationary networks such as Solana and Ethereum.
If Sui Group can grow its effective yield to around 6% through operating revenue, 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 attractive long-term setup,” he said.
Financial discipline and market volatility
Mackintosh compared Sui Group’s approach to other DATs that have struggled with volatility, forced token sales and convertible debt structures.
During the recent market downturn, digital asset treasury companies, publicly traded companies that build core business models around holding large crypto balances, came under sustained pressure that forced some to sell part of their crypto stacks and rethink their strategies.
Sui Group recently repurchased 8.8% of its own shares and still holds about $22 million in cash, which Mackintosh says provides flexibility without forcing knee-jerk decisions.
“We were patient, we used liquidity efficiently and we did not seek financial engineering,” he said. “This discipline is important in this market.”
Looking to 2026, Mackintosh said the company’s focus remains single: to make Sui Group Holdings the central economic player in the Sui ecosystem and provide public market investors with a cleaner way to access its growth.
Read more: Staking Goes Mainstream: What 2026 Could Look Like for Ether Investors
