Kamino names Michael Weisz CEO for U.S. expansion

Kamino has appointed Yieldstreet co-founder Michael Weisz as chief executive as the Solana lending protocol builds a New York operation and expands its U.S. business around institutional credit and tokenized assets. Summary Kamino appointed Yieldstreet co-founder Michael Weisz as CEO to lead its U.S. institutional expansion efforts. Kamino plans a New York headquarters while building finance, legal, compliance and business development teams. DefiLlama tracks Kamino at roughly $1.43 billion in TVL and $1.02 billion active loans currently. Kamino says PRIME deposits surpassed $600 million within 107 days using Figure-linked home-equity loan collateral. Forward Industries confirms tokenized FWDI shares can serve as collateral on Kamino for eligible investors. The Kamino announcement said Weisz will oversee the U.S. expansion, work with institutional asset managers and financial platforms, and assemble a New York-based team spanning finance, product, legal, compliance and business development. The appointment brings a traditional-finance executive into one of Solana’s largest lending protocols. Weisz co-founded Yieldstreet, now Willow Wealth, where the platform deployed more than $6 billion and served more than 500,000 individual investors, according to Kamino. The company named Goldman Sachs, Carlyle, KKR, Ares, Fortress and StepStone among firms that worked alongside Yieldstreet. We are thrilled to announce Michael Weisz (@WeiszM) as the new CEO of Kamino After more than a two decades in fintech & private markets, Michael joins Kamino to lead us into our next chapter of institutional growth, and expand Kamino to the US market A letter from Michael below pic.twitter.com/FjxtkN1dvn — Kamino (@kamino) September 15, 2026 You might also like: Kamino Finance: A Solana-Based DeFi Platform Offering Real Yield Kamino is building its New York operation around institutions New York will serve as the base for Kamino’s institutional expansion, placing the protocol close to asset managers, financial platforms, regulated service providers and capital providers it plans to work with. “Being in New York puts us at the intersection” of asset managers and institutions, Weisz said in the company announcement. He said putting assets onchain creates opportunities around collateral, settlement and distribution, while firms still require legal, compliance, operational, credit and liquidity infrastructure. CoinDesk reported that Kamino is considering roughly 20,000 square feet of office space and intends to recruit a chief financial officer and head of legal. Kamino’s formal announcement confirmed that it is evaluating New York City office space but did not specify its size. Weisz’s new role follows nearly a decade building Yieldstreet. A 2025 corporate biography from NextNRG described him as Yieldstreet’s founder and former CEO and said the investment platform had deployed more than $6 billion across multiple asset classes under his leadership. Kamino tokenized asset lending already includes credit and equities Kamino’s institutional plans build on live lending markets tied to real-world assets.