Lutnick Tapped for Commerce Department

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is set to appoint bitcoin advocate Howard Lutnick as head of the Commerce Department, according to various reports.

Lutnick, who is the CEO of global financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, was previously considered for the Treasury Department. He is actively involved in Trump's presidential transition team. As Secretary of Commerce, Lutnick's role will include job creation and economic enhancement, with a focus on fostering innovation as outlined in the department's mission statement.

Reports from Punchbowl News and The Wall Street Journal surfaced regarding this news on Tuesday morning. Trump's team has not commented on the matter.

Cantor Fitzgerald has served as a custodian for Tether for several years. Tether's USDT is the largest stablecoin globally by market capitalization and is widely utilized. Lutnick has publicly supported cryptocurrency initiatives, including stablecoins and bitcoin. At the Bitcoin 2024 conference in July, he endorsed Tether, affirming that USDT is backed one-to-one with reserves in U.S. Treasuries, bitcoin, and gold.

"There is one certain one-to-one backed digital dollar, and the name of that is USDT and the name of that is Tether," Lutnick said at the conference.

Lutnick expressed his favorable view of bitcoin and noted that both he and Cantor Fitzgerald own bitcoin. "My view is bitcoin, like gold, should be free to trade everywhere in the world," he stated. "As the largest wholesaler in the world, we are going to do everything in our power to make it so."