On July 28, Mill City Ventures III, Ltd. (ticker: MCVT) announced a $450 million private placement to launch the SUI Treasury Strategy. Hedge fund Karatage led the investment round, with the Sui Foundation also providing a matching investment. Prominent institutions such as Galaxy Digital, Pantera Capital, Electric Capital, among others, showed their support, with Galaxy Asset Management overseeing Mill City's financial operations to further enhance market confidence.

Driven by the news, MCVT's stock price surged from $2 to a high of $8 within three days, marking a peak gain of 400%, closing at $6.65 yesterday. This not only signifies a traditionally listed financial company officially stepping into a new era of crypto infrastructure but also heralds the official launch of another "altcoin micro-strategy." Following ETH, SOL, and BNB, SUI is experiencing its institutional consensus moment.

Two Major Institutions Join Forces to Drive SUI Micro-Strategy: Karatage, Sui Foundation Enter the Stage

Non-bank lending institution and financial company Mill City Ventures III, Ltd. recently announced that it has entered into a securities purchase agreement to invest in publicly traded equity by way of private investment, purchasing and selling 83,025,830 shares of common stock at a price of $5.42 per share, with an expected total return of approximately $450 million. The issuance is expected to be completed around July 31, 2025. The company plans to use approximately 98% of the net proceeds from the private placement to acquire SUI, the native token of the Sui blockchain, and approximately 2% of the net proceeds to support the company's short-term lending business. SUI will serve as the company's primary financial reserve asset. This strategic shift marks Mill City's completion of the transition from its traditional business of short-term loans and specialized financing into a new era of financial structure centered around native crypto assets.

This successful transition was made possible with the deep involvement and full support of Karatage and the Sui Foundation.

The financing round was led by the London-based hedge fund Karatage. This proprietary fund focusing on digital assets and cutting-edge technology was co-founded by Marius Barnett and Stephen Mackintosh. Not only did they provide funding, but they also directly participated in Mill City's strategic decision-making and governance restructuring—Barnett will serve as the Chairman of the Board, while Mackintosh will act as the Chief Investment Officer, overseeing the company's SUI investment execution and asset management.

In fact, Karatage's participation is not a sudden move, but has profound strategic groundwork. The fund has been involved in the early stages of the Sui ecosystem, contributing to core protocols such as Walrus and Suilend, and has established a long-term partnership with Mysten Labs, the original contributors to Sui, accumulating extensive ecosystem operation experience. Mysten Labs is the technical core supporting the Sui Network, founded in 2021 by former Meta-Novi R&D lead Evan Cheng and Chief Engineer Sam Blackshear, leading the development of key infrastructure such as the Sui Wallet and Sui Explorer.

Karatage's co-founder Stephen Mackintosh pointed out, "We are at a critical moment when institutional cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence are reaching a tipping point, which will bring significant opportunities to the entire blockchain infrastructure. Sui possesses the speed and efficiency required by institutional-scale cryptocurrency, as well as a technical architecture that can support AI workloads while maintaining security and decentralization, making it fully capable of large-scale adoption."

With this early deep involvement and technical collaboration, Karatage has a profound understanding of the architecture and ecosystem development path of the Sui Network, providing strong confidence and execution support for Mill City's strategic transformation.

Furthermore, the Sui Foundation is also a key driver of this strategic transformation, not only participating in this round of financing but also continuing to support the development and growth of the entire Sui ecosystem in various ways.

As an independent institution dedicated to advancing the construction and applications of the Sui Network, the Sui Foundation is not only an early core investor but also a key driving force behind the prosperity of the ecosystem. The Sui Foundation has been committed to the development of the Sui ecosystem, including providing grants to developers, supporting the building of next-generation decentralized applications (dApps), and further enhancing core infrastructure on the Sui Network, such as the DeepBook Centralized Limit Order Book (CLOB), Automated Market Maker (AMM), liquidity staking protocols, and lending systems.

The Foundation has always adhered to a "buyback and redistribute" strategy, reallocating funds to projects that are most driving network growth through proper resource allocation. At the same time, the Sui Foundation continues to provide SUI token incentives to top-tier DeFi protocols, with nearly all leading projects in the ecosystem receiving official support, significantly boosting the Sui Network's TVL and actual usage heat, and driving the SUI token's price performance through bull and bear markets, demonstrating long-term stability.

As Christian Thompson, Managing Director of the Sui Foundation, stated, "Sui was created to provide the necessary scalability, speed, and security to support the next generation of decentralized applications and real-world crypto use cases, targeting consumers and institutions—from stablecoins to artificial intelligence, to gaming and broader finance."

As a groundbreaking Layer1 blockchain network heralded as "one of the most outstanding in the industry," Sui is attracting increasing attention and trust from developers and institutions due to its industry-leading throughput capacity and concurrent architecture, becoming a key focus of the crypto world's altcoin micro-strategy.

Summary

The Sui ecosystem is experiencing a surge in popularity due to artificial intelligence and decentralized finance. Currently, Sui's total value locked (TVL) has surpassed $2 billion, breaking historical records, with daily trading volumes also steadily rising, and ecosystem activity significantly increasing. On July 27, the SUI coin price briefly rose to $4.5, reaching a new high in six months, making it one of the most prominent altcoins in recent performance.

From Mill City's treasury micro-strategy to Karatage's collaboration with the foundation, Sui has not only demonstrated strong capital attraction but also proven that its technical architecture and ecosystem potential are gaining mainstream recognition. A micro-strategy paradigm driven by institutions and ecosystem empowerment is gradually taking shape, and the subsequent performance of Sui is worth looking forward to.

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