Kamino, a major lending protocol on Solana holding $1.4 billion in assets, is opening a New York office while appointing Yieldstreet co-founder Michael Weisz as its chief executive.
The organization intends to increase lending backed by tokenized real-world items, such as blockchain-powered home equity lines of credit, while forging deeper connections with traditional financial institutions.
Kamino reported handling over $650 billion in transactional volume across four years, and total deposits within its PRIME lending ecosystem climbed past $600 million merely 107 days after debut.
Kamino, one of the premier borrowing protocols on Solana featuring $1.4 billion in assets, is establishing a physical presence in New York to bridge its decentralized credit operations with Wall Street and scale its tokenized asset offerings.
On Tuesday, the firm appointed Michael Weisz, co-founder of Yieldstreet, as its chief executive officer to spearhead this initiative. Kamino revealed it is currently reviewing approximately 20,000 square feet of potential office space in New York with intentions to appoint a chief financial officer alongside a head of legal.
Weisz previously helped build alternative investment gateway Yieldstreet, presently known as Willow Wealth, which deployed upwards of $6 billion alongside major institutions including Goldman Sachs, Carlyle, KKR, and Ares.
"Establishing a base in New York positions Kamino right at the intersection of asset managers, distribution networks, and institutional liquidity that will shape the upcoming evolution of blockchain-based finance," Weisz remarked.
Tokenization—the mechanism of placing conventional instruments like equities, debt securities, and investment funds onto distributed ledgers—has emerged as one of the financial sector’s largest bets on cryptographic infrastructure. Citi estimated that the tokenized securities sector could expand to $5.5 trillion by 2030 as banking institutions and fund managers investigate accelerated settlement cycles, continuous trading environments, and innovative collateral utilization methods.
Lending Against Tokenized Assets
Kamino enables participants to supply cryptocurrency holdings or secure loans utilizing them as collateral. The platform is now scaling this framework toward tokenized real-world assets, establishing marketplaces where participants can secure financing or utilize those instruments as collateral once they transition on-chain.
Its PRIME marketplace, constructed alongside Figure Technologies and Hastra, incorporates blockchain-enabled home equity loans from Figure as collateral. Total deposits crossed the $600 million threshold roughly three months post-launch, according to Kamino.
Nasdaq-listed Solana treasury entity Forward Industries and digital asset management firm Galaxy also leverage Kamino’s architecture for tokenized shares and United States Treasury allocations, the enterprise noted.
Establishing a Wall Street Presence
The New York corporate headquarters places Kamino in closer physical proximity to the investment funds and banking institutions it aims to integrate into its network.
"The most challenging aspect is rarely generating the asset itself," Weisz noted. "Instead, it involves constructing the technological architecture that meets asset managers and distribution networks exactly where they operate."
Kamino stated that it has achieved over $650 billion in aggregate transactional turnover throughout a four-year timespan.
This growth arrives as tokenization progresses beyond merely migrating instruments onto public ledgers. Borrowing and collateral venues are expanding around these assets, providing an additional avenue for decentralized finance protocols like Kamino to collaborate with traditional financial entities.
Originally published at https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/09/15/solana-lender-kamino-taps-yieldstreet-co-founder-as-ceo-in-wall-street-expansion.
