SUI Token Rallies 50% Following Institutional Staking, Fee-Free Stablecoin Plans, and Privacy Features
The Sui network token has experienced a 50% price increase within one week, driven by institutional interest and announcements regarding fee-free stablecoin transactions, privacy capabilities, and prediction market development.
The native cryptocurrency of the Sui network, SUI, has experienced a 50% price increase during the previous seven-day period following a substantial staking commitment by a publicly traded company on Nasdaq, combined with developer announcements about forthcoming capabilities such as fee-free stablecoin transactions and privacy-enabled transfers.
According to data from CoinGecko, SUI was trading at approximately $0.94 on May 4, subsequently rising to $1.41 by Sunday. During this identical period, the token's trading volume experienced a dramatic increase, jumping from above $213 million to a figure exceeding $2.5 billion.
In an interview with Cointelegraph, Ryan McMillin, who serves as co-founder and chief investment officer at Merkle Tree Capital, an Australian cryptocurrency investment management firm, suggested that the price surge can be attributed to several mutually reinforcing factors working in tandem.
McMillin identified a "meaningful supply squeeze" as representing the "clearest near-term trigger" for the rally, which followed Friday's disclosure by SUI Group Holdings, a Nasdaq-listed entity, that its complete SUI token treasury comprising more than 108 million tokens, valued at over $143 million, had been placed into staking positions.
The Sui blockchain launched its mainnet infrastructure in May 2023, with objectives centered on scalability and processing transaction speeds sufficient to meet the demands of financial institutions. During the Consensus 2026 conference held in Miami on Thursday, Paga Group, an African company specializing in payments infrastructure, revealed a partnership with Sui focused on building blockchain-based solutions for cross-border payment transfers and stablecoin-related products.
Private fee-free stablecoin promise
During the Consensus 2026 event, Adeniyi Abiodun, one of the co-founders of Mysten Labs, the development team responsible for creating the Sui network, made announcements about the imminent deployment of zero-fee stablecoin transfer functionality and confirmed existing plans to incorporate a feature enabling private transactions.
Last week witnessed a price spike of more than 70% for privacy-oriented cryptocurrency Zcash (ZEC), as market participants began directing increased attention toward projects emphasizing privacy features. Throughout 2025, privacy has emerged as a significant investment theme within the cryptocurrency space, with tokens focused on privacy experiencing notable gains even as the broader market faced downward pressure.
"This positions Sui as low-friction rails for payments and liquidity and also attractive to agentic AI payments. The Nasdaq angle is also notable: it puts SUI in the same public company treasury/equity market access group as BTC, ETH, SOL and others, signaling growing institutional comfort," McMillin added.
"Sui is shifting from promising L1 or high-beta play to actual adoption story. The combo of institutional staking, zero-fee ambition and regulated futures access is rare among alts. Watch on-chain metrics post-announcement for confirmation."
Simultaneously, Abiodun disclosed on Friday that DeepBook Predict, the Sui network's prediction market platform, was being deployed to the testnet environment for testing. Research published in March by Bitget Wallet in collaboration with Polymarket revealed that prediction markets represent some of the most actively utilized on-chain applications, generating $25.7 billion in trading volume during that particular month.
Rally's success depends on execution, rollout
As of Monday, SUI has stabilized at a price level around $1.31. According to McMillin's analysis, the token possesses potential for extending its upward trajectory in the near term, given that supply constraints and product-related announcements typically generate sustained momentum.
"We are also in an environment where we are seeing green shoots all over the crypto ecosystem and it looks more and more likely the bear market hibernation is over," he said.
"Medium-term: more uncertain but constructive. Success depends on execution, actual zero-fee rollout, Paga integration traction in Nigeria and stablecoin volume growth. Sui has real tech edges and usage momentum, but token unlocks and broader crypto cycles remain risks."