Stablecoin issuer Tether has north of $180 billion in its namesake stablecoin USDT circulating, with comfortable assurances from one of the world's most prominent financial firms that it has the funds it claims.
Brandon Lutnick, the current chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald, told the audience at CoinDesk's Consensus Toronto 2025 that he had personally verified Tether's reserves.
"I personally checked a lot of their reserves, and we proved a lot of those rumors wrong," he said in May.
Cantor has been a custodian for Tether's U.S. Treasuries since at least 2021. Then-Chairman Howard Lutnick — now the U.S. Commerce Secretary — confirmed that his firm had been providing services to the stablecoin issuer in December of 2023.
In doing so, the Lutnicks and Cantor conferred a new level of legitimacy and stability to the world's largest stablecoin issuer, which had previously struggled with maintaining banking relationships and assuring the public at large that it was fully backed. Tether settled an inquiry with the New York Attorney General's office in 2021, after Attorney General Letitia James alleged that the company had been missing north of $800 million in assets backing its reserves.
As part of the settlement, Tether agreed to publish reserve breakdowns.
Tether is continuing to grow. It announced earlier this year it would launch a new stablecoin specifically for the U.S. following this year's passage of the GENIUS Act, tapping former White House official Bo Hines to lead this new division. Cantor will manage this firm's reserves as well.
The company's growth — and Cantor's assurances — hasn't quelled all of the critics: Last month, S&P Global Ratings downgraded USDT, citing concerns over how much of its reserves were composed of Bitcoin . A price drop in the world's biggest digital asset might lead to USDT being undercollateralized, the report said.
Howard Lutnick hedged his comments when testifying before Congress earlier this year, saying Cantor had not been "conducting continuous diligence on Tether's financial statements," though he continued on to say "Tether has every penny, and it can produce liquidity on a moment's notice."
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