Donald Trump Announces Transition Team Leadership

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump reportedly announced that Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald which banks Tether, will help lead his transition team if he becomes president again.

Lutnick will co-chair alongside Linda McMahon, who was previously the U.S. Administrator of the Small Business Administration. His vice president pick J.D. Vance and Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, will be honorary chairs according to multiple reports.

Trump’s campaign team and Cantor Fitzgerald did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cantor Fitzgerald has been a custodian for Tether since late 2021, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino previously told The Block. USDT is the largest stablecoin by market capitalization and is used globally. There has been prolonged speculation about Tether’s reserves, with some saying it lacks one-to-one backing for USDT, but Tether has consistently pushed back on those allegations.

Lutnick stood by Tether in an interview with Bloomberg Television from the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year.

“I manage many, many of their assets,” Lutnick said in that interview. “From what we’ve seen, and we did a lot of work, they have the money.”

Alexander Grieve, vice president of government affairs at Paradigm, said Trump’s pick was significant for the crypto industry.

“Trump Transition leadership announced,” Grieve said on X on Friday. “Inclusion of Howard Lutnick is huge for crypto. He personally briefed the House Republican Conference last year on stablecoins, and is a big crypto bull.”

Crypto has become a significant part of the upcoming election season with millions of dollars flooding into super political action committees. Trump has told voters he would end an “unlawful and un-American crackdown” on the U.S. crypto industry. The former president has also made inroads with the industry by selecting crypto-friendly Vance as his running mate and promised to advocate for bitcoin miners.

Meanwhile, candidate and current Vice President Kamala Harris has begun reaching out to the crypto industry, expressing a desire to learn more about it, although she has not yet taken a public position on crypto.