Nasdaq’s Mill City Plunges as It Targets $500M Crypto Bet on Sui Blockchain

Wall Street meets Web3—with predictable growing pains.

The Setup: Mill City Ventures, a Nasdaq-listed finance firm, just unveiled plans to raise half a billion dollars for a Sui blockchain-focused strategy. Because nothing says 'measured risk' like betting the farm on a layer-1 altcoin.

The Fallout: Shares tanked immediately after the announcement. Turns out, traditional investors still get spooked when companies pivot from boring old finance to volatile crypto plays—even if it's dressed up as a 'strategic allocation.'

The Punchline: The Sui ecosystem gets a potential $500M booster shot, while Mill City's shareholders get a masterclass in 'high-risk, high-reward' theater. Just another day in the marriage of TradFi and decentralized tech.

Mill City Stock Sinks After Announcing $500M Equity Line

Shares of the finance firm dropped 11.4% to $4.91 on Friday following the announcement, with after-hours trading extending losses by another 4.28%, according to Google Finance.

“This equity line is intended to give us the firepower to scale our position as the only Sui treasury on the market with an official Sui Foundation relationship,” said Stephen Mackintosh, Mill City’s Chief Investment Officer.

He described the MOVE as a step toward offering institutional-grade exposure to the Sui ecosystem through public markets.

Mill City’s strategy aligns with a growing trend among public companies to diversify their crypto treasuries beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum.

In recent weeks, firms have added BNB, Solana, and XRP to their portfolios.

Welcome to Sui, Mill City Ventures.

With Mill City’s launch today, everyone can access Sui on Nasdaq. Together, we are showing what’s possible when blockchain is built for mass adoption.

Public market access unlocks greater retail and institutional participation—and a stronger… pic.twitter.com/2m3UBTeZTM

However, Mill City is positioning itself as a specialized SUI treasury, aiming to take advantage of the layer-1 blockchain’s focus on low-latency, scalable infrastructure for AI and gaming applications.

The firm’s new $500 million equity line was arranged with Alliance Global Partners and is intended to further scale its position in SUI.

While investors initially reacted negatively, the broader trajectory of MCVT stock remains bullish, it’s still up 165% since July 24, when the SUI initiative was first unveiled.

Galaxy Asset Management is overseeing Mill City’s SUI holdings as the official treasury manager.

At the time of writing, SUI is trading at $3.45, down 2.4% on the day, mirroring the wider market downturn.

Crypto Treasuries Aren’t Really Buying Crypto

A growing number of publicly traded companies are raising hundreds of millions of dollars to build crypto treasuries, but one analyst says many aren’t actually buying digital assets from the open market.

As reported, crypto analyst Ran Neuner claimed that crypto treasury firms are acting less like buyers and more like exit vehicles for crypto insiders.

Instead of purchasing assets directly from exchanges, these companies often receive crypto contributions from existing holders, in exchange for shares that later trade at massive premiums on public markets.

Skepticism around the sustainability of the crypto treasury trend is also growing.

Last month, Glassnode lead analyst James Check raised concerns over the longevity of the corporate bitcoin treasury strategy, arguing the easy gains might already be gone for new entrants as the market matures.

The warning echoes recent comments from Matthew Sigel, head of digital asset research at VanEck, who has voiced concerns over the Bitcoin treasury strategies adopted by some publicly traded firms.