Stablecoin issuer Tether has more than $180 billion in its USDT stablecoin of the same name circulating, with comfortable assurances from one of the world’s most prominent financial firms that it has the funds it claims.
This feature is part of CoinDesk List of the most influential of 2025.
Brandon Lutnick, the current president of Cantor Fitzgerald, told the audience at CoinDesk’s Consensus Toronto 2025 that he had personally verified Tether’s reserves.
“I personally verified many of their reservations and we proved many of those rumors wrong,” he said in May.
Cantor has been a custodian of Tether’s US Treasuries since at least 2021. Then-chairman Howard Lutnick, now US Secretary of Commerce, confirmed that his firm had been providing services to the stablecoin issuer in December 2023.
In doing so, the Lutnicks and Cantors conferred a new level of legitimacy and stability on the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, which had previously struggled to maintain banking relationships and assure the general public that it had full support. Tether settled an investigation with the New York Attorney General’s office in 2021, after Attorney General Letitia James alleged that the company was missing more than $800 million in assets backing its reserves.
As part of the deal, Tether agreed to publish reserve breakdowns.
Tether continues to grow. Earlier this year it announced it would launch a new stablecoin specifically for the US following the passage of this year’s GENIUS Act, tapping former White House official Bo Hines to lead this new division. Cantor will also manage the reserves of this company.
The company’s growth (and Cantor’s assurances) haven’t quelled all critics: Last month, S&P Global Ratings downgraded USDT, citing concerns about how much of its reserves were made up of Bitcoin. . A price drop in the world’s largest digital asset could lead to USDT being undercollateralized, according to the report.
Howard Lutnick covered his comments when he testified before Congress earlier this year, saying that Cantor had not been “conducting ongoing diligence on Tether’s financial statements,” although he went on to say that “Tether owns every penny and can produce liquidity at any time.”
