Stablecoin issuer Tether has over $180 billion in its namesake stablecoin USDT circulates, with the comfortable assurance of one of the most important financial companies in the world that it has the funds it claims.
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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 have personally verified many of their reservations and we have proven that many of these rumors are false,” he said in May.
Cantor has been a custodian of Tether’s US Treasuries since at least 2021. Then-President Howard Lutnick – now US Commerce Secretary – confirmed that his company was providing services to the stablecoin issuer in December 2023.
In doing so, the Lutnicks and Cantors brought a new level of legitimacy and stability to the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, which previously struggled to maintain banking relationships and assure the general public that it was fully supported. Tether settled an investigation with the New York Attorney General’s Office in 2021, after Attorney General Letitia James alleged the company lost more than $800 million in assets backing its reserves.
As part of the settlement, Tether agreed to publish the distribution of reserves.
Tether continues to grow. It announced earlier this year that it would launch a new stablecoin specifically for the United States following the passage of the GENIUS Act this year, 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 assuaged all criticism: Last month, S&P Global Ratings downgraded USDT, citing concerns about how much of its reserves were made up of Bitcoin. . According to the report, a drop in prices of the world’s largest digital asset could lead to USDT being undercollateralized.
Howard Lutnick hedged his comments during his congressional testimony earlier this year, saying Cantor had failed to “conduct ongoing diligence on Tether’s financial statements,” although he went on to say “Tether has every penny, and it can produce liquidity at any time.”
