Original｜Odaily Planet Daily

Author: jk

On November 19th local time in the United States, the incoming US President Trump announced new cabinet nominations: he nominated Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, as the new Secretary of Commerce. He was previously one of the candidates for Secretary of the Treasury (with a 9% chance of being elected in the relevant pool of Polymarket yesterday).

Trump said in a statement that Lutnick will lead all U.S. affairs related to tariffs and trade. At the same time, as Secretary of Commerce, he will lead all the hot duties of the Commerce Department: responsible for funding new chip factories, implementing trade restrictions, publishing economic data, and even monitoring the weather. He is also one of the co-chairs of Trump's transition team, which has about 4,000 government positions to fill before the presidential inauguration.

According to the process rules and past experience, it will take 2 to 4 months of background checks and Senate confirmation votes from being nominated by the president to finally taking office.

What is most relevant to the crypto world is that Cantor Fitzgerald, with Howard Lutnick as its CEO, manages more than half of the reserves behind Tether. (Odaily previously reported that the $39 billion USDT reserves (U.S. Treasuries) of stablecoin issuer Tether are managed by Wall Street bond trading giant Cantor Fitzgerald. Tether reported earlier this week that its assets were $67 billion as of the end of 2022. Tether has also become an "infallible cornerstone of the currency circle" because of its far-leading stablecoin market share.)

So, how strong is Howard Lutnick's background? What is his relationship with Trump and Musk? What comments or promotions has he made for the crypto industry? Odaily Planet Daily will detail Howard Lutnick's story in this article.

Orphan, young CEO, 9/11 survivor

Howard Lutnick's early life was not a happy one.

He was born on July 14, 1961 in Jericho, Long Island. He is the second of three siblings and his family believes in Judaism. His father is a history professor at the university and his mother is a painter and sculptor. Unfortunately, his parents died of cancer when he was about 18 years old, and left the family with a lot of debt. Howard, who was just a freshman at the time, had to start contacting lawyers to properly arrange the debts left by his father; if his university Haverford College (a famous liberal arts college in the United States) had not offered him a full scholarship after hearing about this, he would not even be able to complete his university studies.

In 1983, Howard Lutnick graduated from Haverford with a degree in economics and immediately joined Cantor Fitzgerald.

Founded in 1945, Cantor Fitzgerald is a financial services company that focuses on institutional equity and fixed income sales and trading, and is also involved in new businesses such as consulting, asset management services, gaming technology and e-commerce. It has more than 5,000 institutional clients.

Through a series of profitable transactions, he won the favor of the company and soon established a deep mentor relationship with the company's founder, Bernard Cantor. Howard later described his rise: "The first time I helped him make $100 million, he liked me; the second time I made $100 million, he fell in love with me; the third time I made $100 million - we became a family."

Howard was named president and CEO in 1991 at the age of 29.

Howard Lutnick’s early photos. Source: Youtube

However, Cantor Fitzgerald’s office was located on the 105th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. On the day of 9/11, Howard was late for school because he was taking his son to preschool, but as he was rushing to his office, he saw the smoke billowing from the twin towers. His brother, Gary Lutnick, and 658 of Cantor Fitzgerald’s 960 employees died in the terrorist attacks that day.

We have no way of knowing how Howard coped with the tragedy after that day, except for some clues in interviews. According to The Economist, he cried "almost every day" for the next three years, even in one TV interview after another. At first, the media expressed sympathy and praise for him, but a few days later, they began to fiercely criticize him for not paying the families of the employees who died, calling him heartless, hypocritical, and sensational. He insisted that he had no choice: "It's just a math problem... The company simply didn't have the money." Over the next five years, he donated about a quarter of the remaining employees' salaries to the victims' family fund. Over time, the company recovered. He said that his employees "stitched his soul back together."

Fortunately, Howard took Cantor Fitzgerald's electronic trading subsidiary, eSpeed, public in 1999. This electronic trading system did not require brokers, which was one of the key reasons Cantor Fitzgerald survived after the 9/11 attacks. Due to the loss of a large number of employees, they were forced to adopt electronic trading to replace the traditional way of operating the Treasury market.

In 2013, Cantor Fitzgerald reached a $135 million settlement with American Airlines and insurers over lawsuits for death and personal injury, according to the Associated Press. "We can never, and never will, consider this event 'ordinary,'" Howard said at the time. "To us, there is no way to describe this compromise with words like 'ordinary,' 'fair,' or 'reasonable.' All we can say is that this matter is legally closed."

Trump referenced the tragedy when nominating Howard Lutnick to be Commerce Secretary, calling him "the embodiment of resilience in the face of unspeakable tragedy."

Musk supported him to be the Secretary of the Treasury, but he went to the Secretary of Commerce

As a billionaire, his remarks always favor traditional American blue-collar workers. During his campaign, Trump proposed a 60% tariff on Chinese imports and a maximum tariff of 20% on all other US imports. Howard explicitly supported the plan in an interview with CNBC in September. He said: "Tariffs are a great tool that the president can use - we need to protect American workers."

He is also a full-throated supporter of the MAGA movement. Howard is one of Trump's main fundraisers for his 2020 and 2024 presidential campaigns. He has hosted fundraisers at his Manhattan home and publicly supported Trump's policies.

In October 2024, Lutnick gave a speech at a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, highlighting the strong performance of the U.S. economy in 1900 and advocating for a return to high tariffs and no income tax. Howard claimed that he missed the time when the U.S. had no income tax.

In 2022, he pushed the right-wing video platform Rumble to go public, providing a platform for public figures who were rejected by mainstream tech giants. "This is the return of a free-speech internet," he said. "We just want the America we grew up in."

Earlier, billionaire Elon Musk and others in Trump's circle called on Trump to abandon Scott Bessent, the original favorite for Treasury Secretary, in favor of Howard. Musk said in a post: "Bessent is a 'by the book' choice, while Howard Lutnick will truly drive change."

However, in the end, Howard Lutnick did not become the Secretary of the Treasury, but was nominated as the Secretary of Commerce. (Extended reading: (Focus on the nomination of the US Treasury Secretary, can the Crypto industry welcome new allies?))

Howard Lutnick's Crypto Talk

Howard Lutnick and his company’s relationship and support for crypto are real. In an interview with a CNBC podcast last year, he said: "I am a supporter of cryptocurrency, but I am very clear: Bitcoin is just Bitcoin. Other tokens are not worth mentioning." He also added: "I am a strong supporter of a stablecoin called Tether."

Previously, he said at the Bitcoin conference: "Bitcoin is like gold and should be traded freely anywhere in the world. As the world's largest wholesaler, we will do everything we can to achieve this goal. Bitcoin should be traded globally like gold, without exceptions and restrictions."

According to Coindesk, his company is not only the manager of Tether's reserves and co-processes U.S. Treasury transactions; Cantor Fitzgerald also recently announced a Bitcoin financing business that plans to provide leverage to Bitcoin investors with an initial capital of up to $2 billion.

At the latest X release, Howard said: "Thank you, President Trump, for trusting me to help achieve your goal of "Make America Great Again". As the next Secretary of Commerce, I will join the best government team in American history and unleash our full economic potential!"

Source: X