The inquiry asks Cantor to disclose annual revenue from Tether, the amount earned by the Lutnick family from the relationship and records relating to Cantor’s reported 5% ownership interest in the stablecoin company. Responses are due by October 23.
What Is the Senate Asking Cantor to Disclose?
The request extends well beyond Cantor’s role as a custodian of Tether’s U.S. Treasury holdings.
Blumenthal is seeking information on Cantor’s AML and know-your-customer controls for Tether, its monitoring of sanctions compliance and whether the firm has ever considered terminating the relationship.
The letter also requests communications involving Howard Lutnick about Tether both before and after he left Cantor to become commerce secretary, including discussions with regulators, the White House and government officials.
Another line of inquiry concerns the transfer of Lutnick’s ownership in Cantor. The firm announced in May 2025 that his holdings would be transferred through trusts benefiting Brandon Lutnick, Kyle Lutnick and his other adult children.
Blumenthal is asking for the terms of that transaction and records concerning any loan or other financing from Tether that may have helped fund it. Similar questions were raised earlier this year when senators sought information about a reported Tether loan linked to the Lutnick family.
Investor Takeaway
The immediate risk is disclosure: the inquiry could reveal how much Cantor earns from Tether and how closely its ownership, custody and family financial ties overlap.
How Valuable Is Cantor’s Tether Relationship?
The Senate letter cites estimates that Cantor’s 5% interest in Tether has increased in value from about $600 million in 2024 to approximately $10 billion, although those figures are estimates rather than a disclosed transaction price or independently verified valuation.
Cantor also earns revenue from managing assets backing USDT. Tether held approximately $184.6 billion of tokens in circulation at the end of June, with its reserves concentrated heavily in U.S. Treasury securities and other short-duration assets.
The relationship has expanded further through Tether’s U.S.-regulated stablecoin. Cantor serves as reserve custodian and preferred primary dealer for USAT, which is issued through Anchorage Digital Bank.
The senator is also asking whether Cantor requires independent audits of Tether. That question now has additional context because Tether International completed its first full financial statement audit with KPMG in August, receiving an unqualified opinion covering its 2025 accounts.
Why Are Sanctions Controls Part of the Inquiry?
The Cantor letter follows a September report prepared by Democratic investigators on the Senate subcommittee examining USDT use by wallets associated with Iran and sanctioned networks.
The investigators analyzed 846 wallets that had been sanctioned or targeted for seizure and said 84% had transacted exclusively or almost exclusively in USDT. The report argued that Tether had not consistently frozen illicit wallets quickly enough, particularly before changes to its sanctions policy beginning in late 2023.
Tether contests that characterization and points to its cooperation with U.S. authorities. The company says actions involving its stablecoin have frozen approximately $550 million in Iran-linked assets during 2026, including more than $344 million in April and another $130 million-plus in July.
Tether froze about $131 million linked to four Iranian central-bank wallets in July after U.S. sanctions action.
Investor Takeaway
The dispute is less about whether USDT reaches sanctioned networks than whether Tether and its financial partners identify and block those flows quickly enough.
What Happens Next?
The October 23 deadline makes Cantor’s response the next concrete milestone, although a congressional document request does not establish that Cantor, Tether or members of the Lutnick family violated any law.
The unanswered questions are commercially important because Cantor occupies several roles at once: reserve custodian, business partner and investor in Tether, while the stablecoin company has become one of the world’s largest holders of U.S. government debt.
Any disclosure of Cantor’s annual custody fees, the economics of its Tether stake or financing connected to the Lutnick ownership transfer would provide investors with a clearer picture of a relationship that has become increasingly important to both companies.
