Crypto15 September, 20262 min read
Kamino Names Yieldstreet Co-Founder Michael Weisz CEO for New York Wall Street Expansion
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Kamino names Yieldstreet co-founder Michael Weisz as CEO to lead US expansion. Expanding to New York with ~20,000 sq ft office and New York headquarters.
Weisz Leads Kamino
Kamino named Yieldstreet co-founder Michael Weisz as CEO to lead its Wall Street expansion, positioning the Solana lender to extend on-chain credit into tokenized real-world assets. The company said it is looking at roughly 20,000 square feet of office space in New York and plans to hire a chief financial officer and head of legal as part of the push. Weisz said, "Being in New York puts Kamino at the intersection of the asset managers, distribution platforms and institutional capital that will define the next phase of on-chain finance," linking the move to institutional demand.
Kamino said it has processed more than $650 billion in cumulative transaction volume over four years, while its PRIME lending market deposits have topped $600 million within 107 days of launch. The expansion is framed as a shift from lending against crypto assets toward markets where investors can finance or use assets as collateral after they move onchain.
Tokenization and PRIME
Kamino’s PRIME market, developed with Figure Technologies and Hastra, uses Figure’s blockchain-based home equity loans as collateral, and the company said it is extending that model to tokenized real-world assets.
CoinDesk reported that Kamino lets users lend crypto assets or borrow against them, while it is building markets for financing or using tokenized assets as collateral after they move onchain.
Weisz described the core challenge in infrastructure terms, saying, "The hardest part is rarely creating the asset," and adding, "It is building the infrastructure that meets distribution and asset managers where they are."
The company said Nasdaq-listed Solana treasury firm Forward Industries (FWDI) and digital asset manager Galaxy use Kamino’s infrastructure for tokenized equity and U.S. Treasury positions.
Kamino also said it has processed more than $650 billion in cumulative transaction volume over four years, tying its institutional expansion to its track record in on-chain lending and collateral markets.
Wall Street Stakes
Kamino’s New York expansion is intended to put the company closer to asset managers, distribution platforms, regulated service providers and capital providers as it moves from primarily providing on-chain credit infrastructure toward supporting a broader market for tokenized assets. The company cited changes involving stablecoin legislation, digital-asset market structure and federal regulators’ treatment of bank participation in digital assets as factors giving institutions a clearer basis for evaluating tokenized assets and on-chain credit. citybiz said Kamino has spent more than four years developing credit and liquidity infrastructure on Solana, reporting more than $650 billion in cumulative transaction volume and more than $20 billion in loans originated, with no bad debt across market cycles.
citybiz also said Kamino’s infrastructure has undergone more than 30 independent audits and that the company says it has not experienced a hack or security incident. In the same expansion narrative, CoinDesk added that tokenization is becoming one of Wall Street’s biggest bets on crypto technology, with Citi projecting the market of tokenized securities could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030.