Author: Ashley,

Trump returned to the White House this year and hosted himself the most luxurious inauguration week in history. According to Forbes, donations from corporate backers and executives reached a record $239 million. Among them, the crypto industry, as one of Trump’s most active supporters, contributed $18 million. Ripple, who has been in court for a long time with the SEC, has donated nearly $4.9 million, ranking second among all donors. Of course, the money is worth it. The SEC then dropped lawsuits or threatening lawsuits against donors of Trump’s inauguration fund, including Coinbase, Crypto.com, Uniswap, Yuga Labs, Kraken and Ripple.

Source: Forbes

Last week, news came out of the Financial Times that Wall Street's veteran financial giant Cantor Fitzgerald is joining forces with SoftBank, Tether and Bitfinex to form a Bitcoin investment alliance of more than $3 billion. It is worth noting that Brandon Lutnik, the helm of the financial giant, is the son of U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnik. Against the backdrop of the Trump administration's vigorous promotion of digital currency friendly policies, the investment alliance formed this time gives the market a lot of room for imagination about the relationship between government and business.

Tether Cantor, a political and businessman

Cantor Fitzgerald, a veteran Wall Street financial company founded in 1945, is known for government securities trading, investment banking services and bond brokers. As one of the 24 major traders in the U.S. Treasury Department, Cantor is directly involved in Treasury bond issuance and trading, maintaining close business dealings with the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department. The company's business covers more than 20 countries around the world and has more than 12,500 employees.

But what really made Cantor out of the circle was its relationship with Tether. For Cantor, a mid-sized investment bank based in Midtown Manhattan, Tether has become the most oil-and-water client, the main custodian of Tether’s dollar reserves, managing 99% of its U.S. Treasury reserves, at a scale of tens of billions of dollars.

Cantor’s relationship with Tether is profitable for both parties. Tether used to be difficult to make a profit, but now earns billions of dollars in interest every year from the government debt it holds in Cantor. According to Forbes, Cantor not only provides high-security custody, but also leverages bond market expertise to assist Tether in converting high-risk commercial paper into low-risk U.S. Treasury bonds, significantly reducing systemic risks. Cantor purchased short-term Treasury bonds for Tether with a maturity of 3-6 months to ensure high liquidity and adjust the Treasury bond-cash ratio through a dynamic asset management system, creating about $2 billion in interest income for Tether in 2023, accounting for nearly one-third of its $5.6 billion profit that year.

One of the core figures that led to the cooperation between the two companies is Howard Lutnik. The 63-year-old billionaire, former Cantor CEO, has made his bank the backbone of the Tether system. He learned about Tether when he looked for ways to enter the cryptocurrency industry after the 2020 decision by federal regulators to make it easier for banks to hold digital assets. Cantor manages Tether’s portfolio of up to $39 billion, making it the custodian of the US dollar assets of Tether’s stablecoin USDT. Currently, the Tether token has a market capitalization of more than $130 billion, and Cantor holds most of the U.S. Treasury bonds that support these tokens.

Cantor Former CEO Howard Lutnik

The relationship between the two companies goes back to 2021. At that time, Tether had issued more than 50 billion tokens, but the outside world always questioned whether it really had an equivalent $50 billion reserve. In February of the same year, the company's owner agreed to pay a $18.5 million fine to the New York Attorney General to settle allegations of false statements in its reserves. The company was in crisis as multiple U.S. banks refused to handle the company's deal, coupled with major U.S. regulators worried that Tether could collapse in a bank run. At the critical moment, Howard took action to provide a guarantee for Tether. In return, Tether paid tens of millions of dollars to Cantor, which he obtained a minority stake in Tether, according to people familiar with the matter.

Tether previously deposited most of the funds in the Bahamas Bank account and invested some of the reserves in risky assets such as Chinese commercial paper to obtain profits. This operating model makes it highly dependent on the Bahamas Bank's ability to connect with Bank of America on its behalf. However, the channel was seriously threatened when Tether paid a $41 million fine to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in October 2021 for false statements on reserves.

After obtaining sufficient evidence to prove that Tether does hold all the reserves, Howard proposes a solution. As the main dealer of U.S. Treasury bonds, Cantor can easily obtain a large number of secure U.S. Treasury bond assets. He promised that Cantor would be willing to be its client as long as Tether converts its assets into Treasury bills.

Tether is in contact with Howard by Chief Financial Officer and largest shareholder Devasini. According to the Wall Street Journal, their relationship was mysterious. Howard "let only a few employees know that Cantor has connections with Tether, only to a few top executives." He often handles this relationship with Devasini himself and meets Devasini on a private plane.

The Italian entrepreneur, who had been involved in the plastics deal, is considered Tether's "shadow helm". Devasini once said that Cantor's custody services allow the company to "more efficiently meet regulatory requirements for liquidity and stability", believing that "Howard will use his political influence to try to eliminate the threat to Tether." Howard also attaches great importance to cooperation with Tether. In the investment agreement reached last year, Howard rarely took charge in the negotiations, which allowed Cantor to obtain about 5% of Tether's valuation of up to US$600 million.

As a father, Howard is also paving the way for the next generation of relationship networks. The Bitcoin investment alliance is led by Howard's son Brandon, and plans to integrate Tether's $1.5 billion Bitcoin, SoftBank's $900 million and Bitfinex's $600 million funds. This model is easily reminiscent of MicroStrategy (now renamed Strategy), a company that soared its market value to $91 billion through massive stockpiling of Bitcoin.

Interestingly, Brandon had an internship at Tether in his early years, and it was Brandon who helped introduce Tether to the right-wing video platform Rumble Inc. Cantor contributed to Tether’s $775 million investment in right-wing video site Rumble Inc., Bloomberg reported. When the deal was announced, Rumble's share price rose 81%, and Cantor's stake in Rumble increased by $54 million.

Brandon Lutnik (first left); Howard Lutnik (second left)

In February this year, Howard narrowly won 51-45 votes and was appointed Secretary of Commerce. The former Cantor CEO has repeatedly supported Tether in public: "I hold their Treasury bonds, and they also have a lot of Treasury bonds. I am a big fan of Tether," and emphasized the contribution of stablecoins to the US economy.

Although when Howard was appointed as a Commerce Department official, he said he would resign from his position in financial companies and "intention to sell shares in these companies to comply with the ethics of the U.S. government." However, opposition has always existed. Senate Elizabeth Warren expressed opposition: "I am deeply concerned about Howard Lutnik's past collaboration with a sanctioned entity, namely Tether, that the Secretary of Commerce should fight for the interests of the United States -- not his personal interests or those former clients whose actions have been detrimental to our national security."

Now looking at it, Howard did indeed resign from his position at Cantor, as he promised, and had a direct connection with Tether. However, this baton was arranged early and handed over to Brandon.

From the Ministry of Commerce to the SEC, the "brotherhood" of the currency circle and the Trump administration

A combination similar to Cantor and Tether is not an isolated case. BUIDL fund, founded in 2024, was the world's largest asset management company, and has become the leader in the RWA track this year with an asset management scale of more than 2.5 billion yuan. The designated custodian of BUIDL is a company called Securitize. Unlike Cantor's traditional financial background, Securities is a crypto company founded in 2017 that focuses on blockchain technology and digital asset securitization.

Why did BlackRock suddenly invest in a crypto company? This may be inseparable from Securitize's relationship network. If you just look at the Securities management, no one might think it is a crypto company, but a traditional financial upstart with Wall Street executives. But don't limit your eyes to Wall Street. If you look at Washington, you will also find that Securities hired Brett Redfearn, former director of the SEC's trading and marketing division in 2021, and is still the CEO's senior strategic advisor and chairman of the advisory board.

Not only that, Securities is also closely related to the SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and Securities. Paul Atkins, who joined Securities back in 2019, served on the advisory board and board member and held up to $500,000 in call options, just stepped down this February. Coincidentally, also in 2019, Securitize became an SEC-registered broker and trader and an SEC-regulated alternative trading system (ATS) operator.

Just when Trump announced the nomination of Atkins as the next SEC chairman, Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo congratulated on LinkedIn: "We are extremely happy with this appointment; although we have lost an excellent consultant, we have also welcomed an excellent new SEC chairman." At the same time, Securitize's official LinkedIn account has also produced exclusive congratulations.

Not just the SEC, Carlos Domingo seems to get along well with the White House "Crypto Tsar" David Sacks. Although David Sacks did not have direct business dealings with Securities, Domingo was not only invited to attend the "Crypto Ball" held in Washington in February this year and "meet again" with Sacks, but also posted a long article after the meeting to review Sacks' early views on tokenization and RWA.

The best channel for "political cash out"?

Speaking of political influence binding personal brands to conduct marketing in the currency circle, who will the first thing you think of? Although Trump also called Bitcoin a "scam" on Fox Business Channel in 2021, three years later, WLFI, a DeFi project supported by the Trump family, appeared in the public eye with a valuation of $1.5 billion in October 2024. Trump himself serves as the "chief crypto advocate" and his son Barron Trump is the "DeFi Visionist". Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are also actively promoting the project. In March 2025, WLFI launched its own stablecoin USD1, running on Ethereum and Binance blockchains, competing with Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC.

WLFI’s funding source and investment portfolio are the focus of outside attention. WLFI raised $550 million through two token sales, of which Justin Sun invested $30 million and became a key supporter. Justin Sun had faced an SEC lawsuit over alleged securities fraud, but in February 2025, the SEC suspended his investigation. According to Forbes, Justin Sun’s investment has brought about $400 million in potential gains to the Trump family as the family holds 75% of WLFI token revenue.

The Trump family’s layout in the cryptocurrency field is expanding, and its investment landscape is far beyond that of WLFI projects. According to Bloomberg's calculations based on public data, the family has now approached the $1 billion mark through diversified investments such as NFT, meme coins, Bitcoin ETFs and mining.

Trump's first exposure to encryption should be in December 2022, when he launched a series of NFT trading cards with a very personal style. These digital collections, presented in images of superheroes, were initiated by Trump's old friend and founder of The Learning Annex, and once launched, it triggered a rush to buy in the collection industry. Now it seems that this successful test may have made Trump smell the business opportunities of crypto layout.

Entering 2025, the Trump family's encryption actions have significantly accelerated. In January, the Trumps successively launched personal meme coins, and the initial price surge brought a generous profit of $11.4 million. Through its two entities, CIC Digital and Fight Fight LLC, the Trump family controls 80% of the token supply and sets up a three-year gradual unlocking mechanism. Just last week, Trump announced that $TRUMP's top 220 big players have the opportunity to have dinner with him.

In February this year, Trump Media and Technology Group joined hands with Crypto.com to apply for registration of the "Truth.Fi Bitcoin Plus ETF". Coincidentally, this action coincided with the end of the SEC's investigation into Crypto.com. By the end of March, the Trump family took a step further and announced that they would cooperate with Hut 8, a well-known North American mining company, to enter the Bitcoin mining industry, and even launched the USD1, the US dollar-pegged stablecoin, to compete for market share with Tether and Circle.

From the president to the minister of commerce, to the SEC chairman and the "crypto tsar", the intersection of these key figures with the crypto industry seems to have become a tightly nested closed loop of interests. As the digital currency friendly policies promoted by the Trump administration gradually implement, Cantor, Security and WLFI may be just a microcosm of the entire industry. Perhaps, this "bad cycle" has just begun. As for whether interest binding and the government's senior government's currency circle layout will trigger stricter public supervision and regulatory review, or whether it has become acquiescent established facts or even new "unwritten rules", we still need to wait and see.