Ryan Berkun is a United States-based entrepreneur and angel investor active in the decentralized finance sector. He is best known as the founder of Teller Finance, a DeFi credit protocol designed to enable undercollateralized loans on-chain – an area most early DeFi protocols avoided in favor of overcollateralized lending.
Berkun launched Teller in the 2019–2020 period, positioning it as infrastructure for on-chain credit scoring and unsecured borrowing. The protocol attracted attention from the DeFi community for tackling one of the sector's hardest problems: extending loans without locking up collateral worth more than the loan itself. Teller raised seed funding from institutional backers including Framework Ventures and other DeFi-focused funds, according to publicly available funding announcements.
In addition to building Teller, Berkun has made angel investments in early-stage crypto and DeFi projects. His portfolio count is reported at five companies. However, the specific names of these investments are not consistently documented in public sources, and deal sizes have not been disclosed publicly.
Team
Ryan Berkun serves as the primary public figure associated with his angel investing activity. No managing partners or co-investors are named publicly in the context of his personal investment activity. Public information about any formal fund structure is limited – his investing appears to operate as individual angel checks rather than through a named vehicle.
Recent activity
Public information about Berkun's investment activity in 2025–2026 is limited. His most recent publicly documented activity centers on the continued development of Teller Finance and its credit infrastructure. No new fund announcements or major portfolio exits have been reported in accessible public sources as of mid-2026.
Berkun represents a type increasingly common in crypto: a founder-turned-angel who backs early DeFi and Web3 infrastructure from direct operating experience. His focus on undercollateralized credit puts him in a niche within DeFi investing that remains early-stage and high-risk. Investors tracking DeFi credit infrastructure may follow his public statements via his X (Twitter) profile and Teller's official channels for the most current signals on his thesis and activity.