Sui Group charts a new playbook for crypto treasuries — leaning into stablecoins, DeFi revenue and an operating model Sui Group Holdings (NASDAQ: SUIG), the only Nasdaq-listed firm with an official relationship with the Sui Foundation, is shifting from a traditional token-hoarding treasury to an operating business built around SUI, native Sui-network products and recurring revenue — a strategy its chief investment officer, Steven Mackintosh, says could make the company the most economically important actor in the Sui ecosystem. From Mill City to a foundation-backed DAT Formerly Mill City Ventures, the U.S.-based specialty finance firm rebranded to Sui Group in 2025 and refocused on a foundation-backed digital asset treasury (DAT) strategy centered on SUI. While it still advises and invests across public and private markets, Mackintosh says the priority is now clear: accumulate SUI and build infrastructure that generates recurring yield for shareholders. “Our performance is always going to be correlated to the price of SUI,” he told CoinDesk. “The goal is to be the most innovative DAT in the market by embedding ourselves directly into the Sui ecosystem.” Where the balance sheet stands Sui Group currently holds about 108 million SUI, roughly $160 million at current prices, which Mackintosh says equals just under 3% of Sui’s circulating supply. The company’s near-term target is to grow that stake to 5% of the float — a milestone Mackintosh calls “really important.” The firm has already improved its SUI-per-share metric (akin to ether-per-share metrics at Ethereum-focused treasuries) from 1.14 to 1.34. A prior PIPE when SUI traded near $4.20 implied a treasury valuation in the $400–450 million range. Sui Group raised around $450 million in that deal but deliberately kept about $60 million on the sidelines to manage market risk and avoid forced token sales during volatility. Digital assets are custodied and managed by Galaxy Digital. Moving beyond staking: the operating model and SuiUSDE Sui Group is transitioning from buying and staking SUI to running live products. The centerpiece is SuiUSDE, a native, yield-bearing stablecoin built with the Sui Foundation and Ethena and expected to go live in February after ongoing testing. Sui Group is one of the first teams to white-label Ethena’s synthetic-dollar technology on a non-Ethereum chain. Mackintosh frames the move as a way to import Wall Street’s stablecoin comfort into a publicly traded vehicle: “Wall Street understands stablecoins far better than altcoins. This is an opportunity to capture that premium inside a public equity.” Under the planned economics, 90% of fees generated by SuiUSDE will flow back to Sui Group and the Sui Foundation, either to buy SUI on the open market or to redeploy into Sui-native DeFi. SuiUSDE is expected to be used across on-chain order books and DEXs — DeepBook, Bluefin, Navi and Cetus were named — and to serve as collateral across the ecosystem. Sui Group hopes to attract the yield-hungry DeFi users that powered Ethena’s growth on Ethereum and says it is in discussions with projects like Pendle. Why Ethena matters here Ethena’s flagship product on Ethereum — USDe — is a synthetic dollar that uses delta-neutral hedging and derivative positions rather than fiat reserves in banks. By adopting Ethena’s approach on Sui, Sui Group aims to create a stable, yield-bearing native dollar for the chain and capture protocol fee upside. Perps revenue and other ecosystem deals Sui Group also signed a revenue-sharing agreement with Bluefin, Sui’s leading perpetual-futures DEX, taking a fixed percentage of trading fees as recurring revenue. “Perps are the killer use case in crypto,” Mackintosh said. He added the company has two additional ecosystem deals in the pipeline, signaling a broader push to diversify operating income beyond staking. The yield and tokenomics case SUI’s base staking yield is about 2.2%. Mackintosh argues Sui’s fixed 10 billion token supply and fee-burn mechanism make the token structurally deflationary — a contrast with inflationary networks — and says if Sui Group can push effective yield to roughly 6% through operating revenues, SUI-per-share could grow materially over the next five years even before market price appreciation. “The combination of deflation and higher yield gives us a very compelling long-term setup,” he said. Capital discipline vs. DAT peers Sui Group portrays its approach as a lesson in discipline compared with other DATs that have been forced into token sales or complicated convertible-debt structures amid market stress. The company has bought back 8.8% of its own shares and still holds about $22 million in cash — liquidity Mackintosh says provides flexibility without panic selling. Assets are professionally custodied by Galaxy Digital, and the firm intentionally withheld capital in its PIPE to manage market risk. What’s next Looking to 2026, Sui Group’s ambition is straightforward: make the company the central economic actor in the Sui ecosystem and give public-market investors a cleaner, revenue-driven way to access the chain’s growth. With a mix of a native stablecoin, perps revenue and further ecosystem partnerships, Sui Group is positioning itself as a hybrid between a treasury and an operating DeFi business — a model that, if it works, could reshape how public companies extract yield and influence from layer-1 ecosystems. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news