| Their father took a $192 million distribution before handing over the firm, and a senator wants Cantor's Tether records by Oct. 23. |
| LEAD ESSAY / 5 MIN / 3 DOCUMENTS / STORY FILE CANTOR-TETHER |
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| Who do you think holds the cash behind the world's biggest digital dollar? |
| Tether says it runs its business out of El Salvador. But most of the money behind its token sits in New York, at a Wall Street firm called Cantor Fitzgerald... And the man who ran Cantor for decades is now your Commerce Secretary. |
| Let me walk you through how this works. Tether issues USDT, a stablecoin. In plain English, that's a digital dollar meant to be backed one-for-one by cash and Treasurys. Those are the IOUs our government sells when it borrows. That cash and those bonds have to be kept safe by an outside firm, which is called a custodian. For Tether, the custodian is Cantor. |
| Howard Lutnick led Cantor until the Senate confirmed him as Commerce Secretary in February 2025. His sons took over after that, so Brandon Lutnick is the chairman today. I'd like you to keep his name in mind. |
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Brandon Lutnick's five-page letter |
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| On Oct. 8, Sen. Richard Blumenthal sent Brandon Lutnick a letter. Blumenthal is the ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. In plain English, he's the top Democrat on the Senate panel that investigates fraud and abuse. His letter puts numbers on what Tether has been worth to Cantor. |
| Since Trump came back to the White House, he wrote, Cantor's 5% stake in Tether climbed from $600 million to an estimated $10 billion. Cantor also collects tens of millions of dollars a year just for holding Tether's assets. You read that right. A 5% stake in one crypto company grew about 16 times over in less than two years. |
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| "The vast majority of its assets reside in the United States under your custodianship." |
| SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, VIA COINDESK |
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| And the father did fine, too... The letter says Howard Lutnick made more than $250 million over the same stretch. That includes a $192 million distribution from Cantor. A distribution, in plain English, is a firm paying cash out to its owner, and his ethics filing shows he took it before handing his stake to his sons. |
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The Sept. 28 report on Iran |
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| Here's why the senator cares where Tether's cash sits. Ten days before the letter, his staff released a report called "Tethered to Terrorism." It studied 846 crypto wallets flagged for ties to Iran and its proxy groups, and 84% of them used Tether's token alone or nearly alone. |
| FILED / BLUMENTHAL LETTER TO CANTOR |
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| The letter asks Cantor for 13 sets of records by Oct. 23. It wants Cantor's yearly revenue from Tether and the amount the Lutnick family made from the deal. Blumenthal also asks whether Tether lent the family money so the sons could take over their father's stake. |
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| Tether says it helped freeze about $550 million in Iran-linked funds this year. But the report says Tether failed to freeze wallets that sent or received millions of dollars from terror financiers... So here's the question I'd ask. What did the firm holding Tether's money know, and how much did it earn while it held it? |
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| Cantor has until Oct. 23 to answer 13 requests. You can read the full letter yourself on the Senate's website. Two points in it are worth knowing. First, it doesn't accuse Cantor of breaking a specific law, and I want to be fair about that. Second, Blumenthal can't force an answer, because Democrats are in the minority and he has no subpoena power. A subpoena, in plain English, is a legal order to hand over records. |
| Why should you care about a token you've never bought? Because the Commerce Department writes export rules, and Congress is still deciding how to regulate stablecoins. Each rule that helps Tether raises the value of a stake held by the Lutnick sons' firm. And when Tether's dollars turn up in sanctioned wallets, it's your Treasury that spends time and money chasing them. Neither Cantor nor Tether answered reporters who asked about the letter. I'll tell you if Cantor answers the Senate by Oct. 23. |
