Rolling Back the Odometer: Beleaguered YieldStreet Changes Name to Willow Wealth and Scrubs Checkered Record from its Public Website

Site was once so popular that deals sold-out in seconds or minutes. But then came hundreds of millions of dollars of losses, investor suing and SEC enforcement action. Now the firm has rebranded as Willow Wealth and claims“transparency is paramount.” But is it transparent for any platform to remove its past performance from public view ... and also make it harder for new investors to understand it's full history?

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Sometimes a rebrand reflects real, evolutionary change. Other times, it's an effort to distance a company from an unpleasant history. And that distinction can be very important, because investors rely on a company’s past record to understand the risks in making a new investment.

The Big Announcement

On October 22, 2025 ,Yieldstreet announced it would soon be rebranding (changed its name) to Willow Wealth. And they said the reason was due to this:

This new name reflects our learnings after ten years of experience in private markets, the breadth of solutions we offer today, and the innovations we’re working on for tomorrow. ... Why change our name? When we launched in 2015, we built a platform for investors who primarily wanted to hand-select individual opportunities in private markets.  Ten years later, our platform has grown and evolved to better serve our investors. We’ve expanded to offer all major private markets asset classes, introduced a managed investing solution, and in the coming weeks, we plan to launch access to new types of funds that look to further expand how you build your portfolio. This evolution has been in pursuit of creating an experience in private markets that looks to mirror what investors have come to expect from public ones. The name Yieldstreet will always be part of our history. But these innovations require a name that reflects our broader mission: giving you tools designed to build a diversified private markets portfolio however you choose to invest. We’ve learned in the past ten years that some investors enjoy evaluating individual opportunities. Others want sophisticated exposure without the complexity. Willow Wealth reflects a commitment to both approaches: strength and flexibility no matter how you choose to invest.

And Willow Wealth emphasized that there will be no effective change for investors, nor to ownership or their team:

What this means for you  Your experience will stay completely the same. Your login, accounts, and investments are unchanged.  ... Is Yieldstreet being sold? No. Same ownership, same team.

And they also emphasized the investors will still continue to receive individual deals (like before):

Will you continue offering individual deals? Yes, we will continue sourcing and vetting differentiated individual opportunities alongside our other solutions.

So on the surface, everything sounds fantastic. And "end of story"...right? Well... not exactly...

"Errr, maybe you forgot a few things?..."

Omitted in the announcement, is that the name that's being jettisoned, has many very serious issue associated with it (and that are highly relevant to new investors). Those include:

1) Staggering investor losses (per InvestmentNews):

“Willow Wealth investors have lost at least $208 million, including approximately $89 million tied to marine loan wipeouts disclosed earlier.”

2) Investor class action lawsuits 3) SEC charges of misleading investors

The other thing not mentioned in the announcement is that Willow Wealth has also removed the decade long track record from their public site. This is despite also saying they will continue to offer direct offerings. How did the YieldStreet train fly so badly off the tracks? And where do things stand now? Here's what happened.

The "good 'ole days": When Demand Ran Faster Than Due Diligence

Several years ago, Yieldstreet was one of the most popular alternative investment platforms. It offered access to investments that many individuals felt they couldn't source on their own, including real estate loans, marine finance, and litigation finance. And demand was shockingly intense. As this site (The Real Estate Crowdfunding Review) reported at the time:

“Many Yieldstreet offerings filled extremely quickly, often in under an hour and sometimes in just minutes”

And that was an understatement. In the Private Investor Club (the sister site to this one, where thousands of investors discuss investment and have followed Yield Street for a long time), some claimed deals filled up in milliseconds (and even considered using bidding bots to get access)! And for a certain type of investor, the scarcity and video-game-like reflexes required to participate, added to the appeal. Also Yieldstreet paired massive marketing momentum with high projected yields (typically the high single digits and higher). So investors piled in.

Warnings Were Raised...and Promptly Ignored

Years before the losses occurred, I raised serious red-flag concerns about Yieldstreet deals and the risks involved. And many other investors in the Private Investor Club felt the same way.

In this public review, I noted that the speed at which deals filled made proper evaluation impossible:

“Conservative investors who require thorough due diligence on every deal will almost certainly conclude the platform is not worth the effort…it’s not possible to do a true due diligence on deals. ... It takes days or weeks of hard due diligence to thoroughly vet a deal. So it’s hard to do all that work, when there’s a good chance you can’t get into the deal at the end.”

I also pointed out there was inadequate transparency on deals. And investors were dependent on vague, second-hand information (and which is...by the way...is very unusual):

"The information YieldStreet provides is incomplete and not enough for a full due diligence and/or meaningful stress tests." ... "The investor is relying on secondhand information to invest their money. If that info is inaccurate or incomplete, then it can lead to problems, and there is really no way to know in advance.”...

Again, these red-flags were raised by myself (and others in the Private Investor Club) before the later losses, lawsuits, and regulatory actions happened. And unfortunately, investors ultimately ran into problems with all of the above issues. Here's what happened...

The First Cracks Appeared at Sea

The disclosure gaps soon became visible in Yieldstreet’s marine-finance investments.

These were loans for buying old ships to deconstruct and sell for parts. And they were marketed as safer, asset-backed loans (and secured by the vessels themselves). However, one of the borrower's defaulted (didn't pay). So "not the end of the world..just go to the collateral and recover"...right? Well, when that happened, YieldStreet admitted:

Yieldstreet lost track of the ships

Oops. And ultimately the borrower was found to have commited fraud.

And worse, many YieldStreet deals that appeared to be separate opportunities, turned out to rely on the exact same underlying borrower. Per CNBC:

“The same borrower had received loans from multiple Yieldstreet-backed vehicles.”

So it snowballed and many investments were hit at once. In the end it skyrocked to:

"$89 million in marine loan wipeouts"

...which was very painful.

Lessons learned

Afterwards, one investor ruefully wrote (in a write-up that was posted on The Real Estate Crowdfunding Review):

“There was no clear way to tell that multiple deals were tied to the same underlying source. Each investment looked separate.”

Another investor later described the platform disclosures issues this way:

“The descriptions were very high level. I couldn’t really evaluate what would happen if things went wrong.”

Another one said:

“I thought I was diversified. After the losses, it became clear that I wasn’t.

The Cracks Widen

Unfortunately that wasn't the end of the story.

Over time, additional Yieldstreet offerings in other strategies also ran into trouble, including real estate-backed investments. Some exits took far longer than originally expected. Some were full or major losses. And prior to removing their track record as part of the name change, the Willow Wealth track record showed this (per CNBC):

“A chart on the company’s website showing annualized returns of negative 2% for real estate investments from 2015 to 2025 — down from 9.4% gains just two years prior"

And unfortunately, the carnage is still an ongoing story. Per CNBC a few days ago:

"Willow Wealth, last week informed customers of new defaults on real estate projects in Houston and Nashville, Tennessee. ... The letters ... account for about $41 million in new losses. They come on the heels of ... $78 million in losses ... in an August report."

When asked to comment on this, a Willow Wealth spokesperson said:

"As for CNBC’s reporting on the new real estate defaults and rising tally of losses, the Willow Wealth spokeswoman called it a “rehash” of news on “investments from five years ago.”

I strongly suspect that the investors (who are still living with the fallout of $ millions lost ... and counting)...probably have a less nonchalant point of view.

"When Investors Attack"

As losses mounted on the maritime investments, angry investors demanded answers and turned to the courts. And they ultimately organized into a class action lawsuit.

Then in October 2024, InvestmentNews reported they were successful in obtaining a settlement:

“Yieldstreet agreed to pay $6.2 million in cash and waive certain fees to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by investors over losses tied to ship-scrapping investments.”

Unfortunately, the settlement represented only a small fraction of the losses investors had experienced. So in my opinion, it was too little, too late.

Regulators Step In

Meanwhile, regulators took notice. And on September 12, 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that Yieldstreet had agreed to settle a case over how it described risks to investors.

According to the SEC, Yieldstreet learned before the deal closed that other ships tied to the same borrower had already been dismantled without investors being repaid. And yet they went full-steam ahead. Per the SEC:

"The order finds that, prior to the offering, YieldStreet personnel had information showing that ships securing other loans that YieldStreet affiliates had made to the same borrowing group were reported as deconstructed without any notice or repayment or could not be located because their tracking systems were off. According to the order, YieldStreet proceeded with the offering without disclosing this material information to investors. The order states that YieldStreet later concluded that the borrowing group caused the ship securing the September 2019 offering to be deconstructed, but it stole the deconstruction proceeds by not repaying the loan from YieldStreet, leaving investors facing millions of dollars of losses." ... "YieldStreet failed to disclose to investors a heightened risk that it would be unable to seize the ship in the event of a default. " ... “YieldStreet aims to unlock the complex alternative investments market for retail investors but failed to disclose glaring red flags it had about the security of the collateral backing this offering,” said Osman Nawaz, Chief of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Complex Financial Instruments Unit."

Without admitting or denying the findings, Yieldstreet agreed to pay approximately $1.9 million and accepted a cease-and-desist order.

Later reporting noted that most of the money was used to cover legal and enforcement costs, leaving little to distribute to investors.

“the settlement proceeds are being used to reimburse outstanding legal and other third-party expenses … and legal expenses … well exceed the entire settlement amount … with any additional distributions to investors expected to be de minimis.”

So unfortunately, it was again a case (in my opinion) of too little, too late.

Rebranding Away the Past

Prior to the rebranding, Yieldstreet displayed it's track record on its website showing how groups of investments had performed over time. And it wasn't always pretty. But at least it was honest and real. And in my opinion, this kind of transparency is the bare minimum that's acceptable from a potential sponsor who wants my money.

But recently, according to InvestmentNews, the Willow Wealth rebrand removed that decade of historical performance data from public view:

“A chart on the company’s website showing annualized returns of negative 2% for real estate investments from 2015 to 2025 — down from 9.4% gains just two years prior — has been taken down.”

Why? In response, Willow Wealth claimed transparency is actually a top objective of their behavior:

“Transparency is paramount to us, and we consistently provide strategy-specific performance information for each manager at the offering level to support informed decision making.”

But a new investor researching Willow Wealth today would have a hard time finding:

1. The SEC charges of misleading investors (and settlement).

2. The investor class-action lawsuit (and settlement).

3. All the earlier info on the jaw-droppingly large maritime losses and ugly real-estate losses.

4. All the summary figures showing negative performance across asset classes.

   
   

And in my opinion, every new investor has a right to know about all of the above (because it's crucially important information).

So I feel that what Willow Wealth is doing is insufficient transparency.

Learning and Discussing More

Private Investor Club members have been discussing Yieldstreet (now Willow Wealth) for years. This includes detailed reviews, risk breakdowns, and follow-up discussions as events unfolded. So if you want to better understand it's history, or track how future developments play out, you can do that (with thousands of investors) in the club. And you can also discuss thousands of other sponsors and deals as well.

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