Tether’s Treasury bill custodian is now officially a U.S. government Cabinet member, but will that help the world’s largest stablecoin issuer avoid being banished from the world’s largest crypto market?

On February 18, Howard Lutnick, founder of Wall Street financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald (NASDAQ: ZCFITX), was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the nation’s new Secretary of Commerce.

Tether’s custodian of Treasury bills is now a U.S. government Cabinet member, but will that help the world’s largest stablecoin issuer avoid being banished from the world’s largest crypto market?

On February 18, Howard Lutnick, founder of Wall Street financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald (NASDAQ: ZCFITX), was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the nation’s new Secretary of Commerce. As promised, Lutnick has begun divesting his interests in corporate operations, although the list of companies in which Lutnick either has a stake or plays an executive role is well over 800.

In his pre-confirmation hearing with the Senate Commerce Committee, Lutnick confirmed that Cantor “owns a convertible bond with Tether.” The size of this “convertible debt investment” remains unknown, as Lutnick’s written responses to Committee questions stated that the amount “is not a matter of public record.” Lutnick previously said only “no” to queries about whether Cantor held a 5% stake in Tether, meaning it could be higher or lower.

Lutnick has also yet to confirm whether Cantor’s Tether ties means he’ll recuse himself from participating in President Donald Trump’s new Working Group on Digital Assets (aka ‘crypto council’). Led by Trump’s new ‘AI & Crypto Czar’ David Sacks, the working group includes multiple Cabinet members, including the Commerce secretary. Asked specifically by the Committee whether he’d recuse himself, Lutnick said only that he would “follow applicable government ethics laws and regulations.”

It’s been over a year since Lutnick went public with claims that Cantor acts as custodian for Tether’s alleged ~$100 billion worth of U.S. T-bills. But Tether has never allowed anyone to audit its books, leaving many observers skeptical regarding the reality of the reserve assets supporting the now nearly $142 billion in issued USDT tokens.

The Committee also probed Lutnick regarding a late-2024 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report that claimed he’d given assurances to Tether founder Giancarlo Devasini that he’d use his longstanding personal friendship with Trump to “defuse threats” to Tether by U.S. legislative bodies, regulatory agencies and/or law enforcement.

In response, Lutnick said only that he’d “never suggested to anyone that I would do anything improper with respect to Tether.” But Lutnick also told the Committee that “Congress should be careful not to undermine dollar hegemony on blockchain through legislation.”

Tether supporters like to claim that dollar-denominated stablecoins that invest in T-bills are helping shore up support for the greenback as the world’s reserve currency. They studiously avoid the reality that Tether’s $113 billion in ‘direct and indirect’ T-bill exposure represents less than 0.004% of the $28.5 trillion worth of T-bills currently circulating in the wild. Hell, the total market cap of all dollar-denominated stables is only 0.08% of the $2.7 trillion worth of T-bills issued last month alone.

Tether loves its gold, loans, and BTC

Apart from its T-bills, Tether’s most recent attestation-not-an-audit shows its reserve assets include nearly $8 billion worth of BTC tokens, $8.2 billion in ‘secured loans,’ $5.3 billion in ‘precious metals’ and $4 billion worth of ‘other investments.’

None of these qualify as acceptable reserve assets in the bevy of new stablecoin bills currently circulating in Congress. A recent JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) report pointed out that Tether would have to convert all of its “noncompliant assets” into T-bills or dollars to conform to the fine print of these legislative documents.

Only two-thirds of Tether’s current reserves would be compliant under the provisions in the House of Representatives’ STABLE Act, while the Senate’s GENIUS Act would allow 83% of Tether’s current reserves.

JPMorgan further questioned whether Tether was capable of complying with the bills’ requirements to submit reserve assets to external accounting scrutiny, something Tether has resolutely refused to do despite nearly a decade’s worth of promises, vows and pinky swears.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino was quick to respond publicly to JPMorgan’s musings, claiming its analysts “are salty because they don’t own Bitcoin.” In a more expansive response later that day, Ardoino argued that “Tether’s group equity (on top of stablecoin reserves) is over $20 billion in other very liquid assets,” while Tether’s alleged profits from its investments offer an extra big cushion in case of any hard landing.

But another common feature of the proposed stable bills is the focus on so-called ‘payment stablecoins,’ aka