Howard Lutnick: Tether’s Big Backer

The CEO of prominent bond broker Cantor Fitzgerald played a major role in validating Tether this year by vouching for its reserves.

Dec 10, 2024, 3:28 p.m. UTC

Howard Lutnick's firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, is a prominent Wall Street bond broker and a member of an exclusive club: It's a primary dealer that gets to trade directly with the Federal Reserve. So when Lutnick — Tether's U.S. Treasuries dealer — said this year that Tether actually has the money it says is backing its huge USDT stablecoin, that put a final nail in the coffin of conspiracy theories claiming otherwise.

Lutnick's other source of influence is being a supporter of crypto — well, he's specific: just bitcoin and stablecoins — in close orbit around President-elect Donald Trump, serving now as co-chair of Trump's transition team and a nominee to run the Commerce Department.

It's not clear how responsible Lutnick was for Trump's turnaround on crypto (going from somewhat opposed during his first presidency to full embrace on the campaign trail this year), but if Lutnick whispered the “pro” argument in Trump’s ear, it couldn't have hurt.

This profile is part of CoinDesk's Most Influential 2024 package. For all of this year's nominees, click here.

Nick Baker

Nick Baker is CoinDesk's deputy editor-in-chief. He won a Loeb Award for editing CoinDesk's coverage of FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried, including Ian Allison's scoop that caused SBF's empire to collapse. Before joining in 2022, he worked at Bloomberg News for 16 years as a reporter, editor and manager. Previously, he was a reporter at Dow Jones Newswires, wrote for The Wall Street Journal and earned a journalism degree from Ohio University. He owns more than $1,000 of BTC and SOL.