Howard Lutnick, who is President Donald Trump’s candidate to be secretary of Commerce, is generating scrutiny about his relationship with Tether of Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat of Classification in the Banking Committee of the Senate and one of the most reliable critics of the Congress of the digital asset sector.
As CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, the Wall Street firm that acts as the United States banker to lead the Stablingin Tether world station, Massachusetts’s Democrat said that Lutnick backed a cryptographic operation with “clear links with criminal activity.”
“You played a fundamental role in The Rise of Tether, a gloomy cryptographic firm with profits greater than $ 7.7 billion in 2024,” Warren wrote in a letter to Lutnick, which is presenting his case on Wednesday to the Senate Committee of the Senate that He is considering his confirmation to Trump’s Cabinet.
As a merchant of American treasures of Tether and the main custodian of his treasure reserves, he suggested that Lutnick’s firm shares the responsibility of the illicit abuse of his stablecoin (USDT) for criminals and terrorists. He also said that Cantor Fitzgerald is part of Tether, although Lutnick testified on Wednesday that the company has a convertible bonus but not a direct capital participation.
“The use of Stablecoin de Tethher has been the subject of more than 150 investigations on four continents, even here with the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department,” Warren wrote to Lutnick, who led Trump’s transition team when he returned to the White House. .
The CEO of Tether, Paolo Ardoino, has tried to defend the reputation of his company and said about Lutnick’s political rise: “We do not expect any political favor of anyone.”
Lutnick said at the confirmation hearing that he supports greater audit demands in the United States to Stablecoin issuers. He also said that artificial intelligence tools for the application of US law must be implemented.
“Our ia tools will extract the illicit activity of Stablecoins within a year or two,” he said. “Our technology in its blockchain will end it, and that is what we must require.”
The only reason the government can detect and track the illegal activity in Tether is because of its inherent transparency, Lutnick argued.
“When these same illicit characters use dollars or euros, we don’t know,” he said. He argued that Stablecoins backed by the United States “must allow us the police and our AI tools in their models so that we can search and catch illegal activities.”
Read more: Howard Lutnick: Tether’s great sponsor
Update (January 29, 2025, 18:22 UTC): Add additional comments from Lutnick.
