Cantor Fitzgerald Sends $10M to Tether-Linked PAC, Raising Questions About Who Really Shapes Stablecoin Rules
Cantor Fitzgerald, the Wall Street firm that custodies nearly all of Tether's U.S. Treasury reserves, donated $10 million in January 2026 to Fellowship PAC, a pro-crypto super PAC chaired by a Tether executive. The contribution became public on April 15 via a Federal Election Commission filing, adding a new dimension to the financial and political relationships connecting Tether, Cantor, and the current U.S. administration.
Fellowship PAC was formed in August 2025 and officially launched the following month with a stated commitment to spend more than $100 million backing exclusively Republican candidates in the 2026 midterm elections. Its stated mission is supporting pro-crypto, pro-innovation lawmakers. Jesse Spiro, who serves as Vice President of Regulatory Affairs at Tether US, was appointed chairman of the PAC on April 1, 2026. Mitchell Nobel, a Cantor Fitzgerald executive, serves as the PAC's treasurer.
The donation lands at the center of a cluster of overlapping interests. Cantor Fitzgerald has served as the primary custodian for the U.S. Treasury bills that back USDT, Tether's flagship stablecoin, currently circulating at a market cap of roughly $184 billion. That custodial relationship dates to approximately 2021, making the financial ties between the two firms long-standing and structural rather than incidental. According to Bloomberg, Cantor holds approximately 99% of those reserves. The firm also acquired a roughly 5% equity stake in Tether through a convertible bond arrangement in 2024. Cantor's treasurer now sits atop a PAC chaired by a Tether executive, and Cantor's $10 million contribution is the first large donation to the PAC that has been publicly confirmed.
The conflict-of-interest questions extend to the cabinet level. Howard Lutnick, who served as Cantor's longtime CEO, is now the U.S. Secretary of Commerce under the Trump administration. He divested his direct ownership stake in Cantor to family trusts before taking the role. A Bloomberg investigation published in March 2026 reported that "Dynasty Trust A," the trust holding the majority Cantor stake for Lutnick's children, had simultaneously borrowed an undisclosed sum from Tether, with all trust assets pledged as collateral. The Commerce Secretary therefore has indirect financial ties to the stablecoin issuer while overseeing agencies with potential regulatory influence over it. During his Senate confirmation hearing, Lutnick also softened his earlier characterisation of Tether's financial stability. Senator Elizabeth Warren raised concerns about Lutnick's Tether ties, citing in a formal press release issued in connection with the confirmation process that Tether had a "long record of financing terrorists and illicit activity." Other Democratic senators separately pressed Lutnick on broader conflict-of-interest concerns beyond the Tether-specific questions Warren raised.
Fellowship's spending record has drawn its own scrutiny. The PAC's first publicly disclosed expenditure, a $300,000 ad buy targeting a Georgia House special election, was routed through Nxum Group. Critics have flagged the arrangement as a conflict-of-interest loop. Nxum was co-founded by Bo Hines, who formerly served as the Trump administration's crypto policy adviser and currently serves as CEO of Tether US, placing a PAC funded to influence crypto regulation in a financial relationship with a firm tied to the executive who once advised the White House on that same policy area and now leads Tether's U.S. operations. Michael Beckel, research director at nonpartisan watchdog Issue One, noted that such arrangements are not legally prohibited as long as services are provided at fair-market rates. Despite having pledged more than $100 million, FEC filings show the PAC's reported account balance at zero as of the most recent disclosure period.
The stakes in these political maneuvers extend well beyond U.S. borders. The communities with the greatest material exposure to USDT outcomes have no representation in U.S. PAC politics, yet the decisions made in Washington will shape the terms on which hundreds of millions of people use the asset. Stablecoin payment volume reached $11.1 trillion globally in 2025, up 85 percent year on year, according to the BVNK Stablecoin Utility Report. Nigeria now ranks first globally for combined USDT and USDC ownership, with 59% of Nigerian crypto users holding USDT, according to the same report. With the naira having lost more than 70% of its value against the dollar in recent years, Nigerians use USDT to preserve savings, pay for cross-border trade, and send remittances without the costs of traditional wire systems. Sub-Saharan Africa's crypto market grew 52% in 2025, with Nigeria as its center. In India, USDT is the most widely held stablecoin, outpacing USDC ownership, though the government remains wary of dollar-pegged stablecoins as a potential threat to capital controls. The GENIUS Act compliance framework could ease regulatory pressure on Tether in India by legitimising its structure, or it could prompt reciprocal tightening by Indian regulators concerned about U.S.-aligned crypto dominance. Both possibilities remain live. Pakistan goes further, explicitly prohibiting persons resident or domiciled there from accessing the Tether.to platform directly. For users in all three countries, U.S. legislative decisions about how stablecoins are regulated carry immediate, practical consequences.
The broader political context makes those stakes clearer. The crypto industry has committed at least $288 million to the 2026 midterms, more than double the record $130 million spent during the entire 2024 cycle. Fairshake PAC, backed by Coinbase, Ripple, and Andreessen Horowitz, reported a cash position of $193 million, placing it among the best-funded super PACs in the United States. Fellowship is positioning itself as a complementary vehicle, specifically tied to Tether's regulatory interests. Those interests are sharpening. Tether launched its U.S.-compliant stablecoin USAT in January 2026, with a current market cap of approximately $37 million, as part of its adaptation to the GENIUS Act. The GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, established the first comprehensive federal framework for stablecoins, covering reserve requirements, audits, and anti-money-laundering obligations. A second measure, the CLARITY Act, passed the House in July 2025 but remains stalled in the Senate Banking Committee; it addresses stablecoin yield and ethics provisions that bear directly on Tether's regulatory environment, meaning the legislative picture is not yet settled. How aggressively these frameworks are enforced, and who sits in Congress to shape them, will be partly decided by money that is already in motion. For the Nigerians saving in USDT against a collapsing naira, the Indians navigating dollar-peg restrictions, and the Pakistanis working around platform bans, those congressional decisions are not abstractions. They are the rules that govern the financial tools on which daily life depends.