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.

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.

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. Its PRIME market, created with Figure Technologies and Hastra, brings yield generated by Figure’s lending business into Solana-based DeFi markets.

Figure Technologies said in December 2025 that Kamino would serve as the exclusive onchain credit and lending partner for PRIME. Figure said its Democratized Prime business supplies yields generated from more than $1 billion per month in onchain loan originations, including pools linked to home-equity lending.

Kamino now says PRIME deposits surpassed $600 million within 107 days of launch. The figure is a company-reported deposit total and has not been presented as an independently audited asset figure.

Public equities have entered the same lending framework. Forward Industries confirmed in December 2025 that eligible non-U.S. holders of tokenized FWDI shares could post the stock as collateral on Kamino and borrow stablecoins while retaining exposure to their shares. The tokenized securities use Superstate’s Opening Bell system, with Superstate acting as the registered transfer agent.

Galaxy has documented a comparable use case for its own stock. Its second-quarter Solana report said tokenized GLXY shares became available as collateral on Kamino through Superstate in April 2026. Galaxy said more than $17 million of Superstate-issued assets, including GLXY, were sitting as borrowable collateral at the time of its report.

Ascrypto.news previously reported, Kamino Lend held approximately $41.7 million of tokenized-stock DeFi TVL, ranking second behind Uniswap V4’s $59.1 million based on Token Terminal data. The measured category covered equity-linked tokens deposited across decentralized exchanges, lending markets and related applications.

DefiLlama puts Kamino TVL above $1.4 billion

Current DefiLlama data places Kamino’s total value locked near $1.43 billion, all on Solana, with approximately $1.02 billion in active loans. The data provider lists cumulative protocol fees at roughly $249 million and cumulative revenue near $50.3 million.

Kamino separately says it has processed more than $650 billion in cumulative transaction volume over four years and originated more than $20 billion in loans. The company claims it has recorded no user bad debt or security incident while undergoing more than 30 independent audits and four formal verifications. Its announcement did not provide an independent audit covering the cumulative operating figures.

KMNO showed little price reaction following the leadership announcement. Market data listed the token close to $0.025 on Sept. 16, placing its market capitalization at approximately $138 million.

DefiLlama’s protocol figures show lending assets remain far larger than the market value of the governance token, while Kamino continues to rank among Solana’s largest lending applications by locked assets.

Solana’s tokenized asset market has expanded during 2026. In June, crypto.news reported that Solana’s real-world asset value reached $2.7 billion, citing RWA Foundation data. The figure covered tokenized funds, credit products, securities and related assets distributed through the network.

New York hiring comes as U.S. crypto rules remain unsettled

Kamino framed its U.S. expansion partly around changes in American digital-asset policy. Its Sept. 15 announcement cited the GENIUS Act, regulatory treatment of bank crypto activities and congressional work on crypto market-structure legislation.

One part of that policy backdrop changed hours after Kamino issued its release. The U.S. Senate voted 49-50 on Sept. 15 against invoking cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3633, the CLARITY Act. The motion required three-fifths support, and the official Senate record lists the procedural effort as rejected.

The vote did not repeal existing crypto rules or prevent regulators from acting under current statutory authority. It stopped the bill from clearing that procedural stage on Sept. 15, while the Senate record did not provide a new vote date.

Kamino has not announced a deadline for opening its New York office or completing the planned hiring. The company said it is evaluating office space and plans to build teams covering finance, product, legal, compliance and business development while continuing to develop its Solana-based infrastructure.