Blumenthal Demands Cantor Fitzgerald Reveal Tether (USDT) Stake Valued at $10B

A $10 Billion Stake Under Inquiry

Senator Richard Blumenthal has escalated congressional scrutiny of Cantor Fitzgerald, demanding the investment bank hand over records on its financial relationship with Tether, the issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin. In a letter addressed to Cantor chairman Brandon Lutnick and dated October 8, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations requested documents on the bank’s earnings from the partnership, its custody services and its monitoring of potential sanctions breaches, and gave Cantor until October 23, 2026, to respond. The October 8 letter also seeks communications involving Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, both before and after he joined the Trump administration.

The relationship dates to 2021, when Cantor began holding the U.S. Treasury securities that back USDT, an arrangement in which off-chain bills support an on-chain token, a classic real-world assets structure. In 2024, during Howard Lutnick’s tenure as chairman and chief executive, Cantor acquired rights to a reported 5% stake in Tether. Blumenthal estimates that holding has climbed from $600 million to roughly $10 billion since President Donald Trump returned to office, a figure drawn from external reporting rather than any public company valuation. He asserts the bank also collects tens of millions of dollars each year in fees for the assets it holds on Tether’s behalf.

Howard Lutnick’s exit adds a political layer. After Senate confirmation as commerce secretary in February 2025, he left Cantor, and his sons Brandon and Kyle assumed the chairman and vice chairman roles. Blumenthal claims the secretary received more than $250 million following Trump’s return, including a $192 million distribution from Cantor, and wants the bank to explain how ownership passed to his children and whether Tether provided any loans or financing connected to that transfer. “Cantor Fitzgerald’s lucrative business arrangements with Tether come at the expense of America’s national security,” the senator wrote, an allegation rather than a court finding. The requested records generally cover January 1, 2023, onward. No public response from Cantor had surfaced as of October 9.

846 Iran-Linked Wallets, 84% in USDT

The letter builds on a September 28 report by Democratic investigators on the subcommittee, who examined 846 digital-asset wallets sanctioned or otherwise targeted over suspected links to Iran and affiliated organizations. Their analysis found that 84% had transacted exclusively or almost exclusively in USDT. Blumenthal alleges Tether left some of those addresses active despite publicly available information connecting them to illicit financing, and he has urged the Treasury and Justice departments to examine whether banking or sanctions laws were breached.

Tether rejects the framing. In a statement issued the same day as the report, the company said it helped freeze approximately $550 million in Iran-linked USDT during 2026: more than $344 million across two addresses in April and over $130 million across four wallets in July, at addresses U.S. authorities identified as connected to Iran’s central bank and sanctions networks. Chief executive Paolo Ardoino said the token “is not a haven for sanctioned actors, terrorist organizations, or criminal networks,” and put the firm’s lifetime total at more than $4.9 billion in assets frozen, over $2.4 billion of it in cooperation with U.S. authorities, across more than 2,900 investigations. The USDT price has held its one-dollar peg throughout the dispute.

One episode shows where that cooperation record becomes contested. In October 2025, Tether froze $42.4 million in USDT tied to Thai businessmen at the informal request of Homeland Security Investigations, before any warrant existed. It was not until February 2026 that the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of North Carolina secured a warrant to seize the funds, part of a $61 million action against a pig-butchering scheme, with the order calling for the tokens to be burned and reissued to a government wallet. The businessmen are now suing Tether and deny any criminal conduct.

Our reading of the letter itself is that it is a congressional records demand, not an enforcement action: the document announces no hearing, sets no separate enforcement deadline and, as written, establishes no violation by either company. Its weight lies in scope. The request sweeps in custody files, audits, sanctions-screening procedures and communications with a sitting cabinet secretary, reaching back to the start of the relationship, which makes Cantor’s own compliance file the evidence base. Unlike a central bank digital currency, USDT is a private dollar token whose reserves sit in commercial custody, so the bank’s oversight choices are squarely what the inquiry tests. Cantor has until October 23; how it answers, or whether it answers at all, will determine whether this stays a letters exchange or escalates toward subpoenas.