If there’s any obvious winner among the top 10 crypto assets following Donald Trump’s secured his resounding election victory, it appears to be bitcoin. The price of the world’s largest crypto asset rallied at key moments on Tuesday, coinciding with developments in electoral predictions.
As the Associated Press, NBC, Fox, and other news sources progressively called battleground states in Trump’s favor, traders watched bitcoin rally to a series of all-time highs. The tether between bitcoin and Trump was evident on real-time charts and displayed for the entire world to see.
Bitcoin’s swell also raised the tide across thousands of altcoins with leaderboards like CoinMarketCap turning green almost without exception. Ether, Solana, BNB, XRP, and Dogecoin are all decidedly higher now than 24 hours ago.
However, another top 10 digital asset didn’t rally at all — despite securing a massive victory. Tether (USDT), the world’s largest stablecoin, was trading at $1 yesterday and is at $1 today.
Despite its unchanged price, careful market observers were in no doubt it had scored a significant victory.
Why Tether won as well as Trump
By some estimates, Tether is one of the most profitable companies per employee in the world. Earning interest, dividends, and capital appreciation on its self-professed asset base in excess of $120 billion, Tether could be earning tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in profit per employee.
Comfortably operating one of the most lucrative enterprises in the world, Tether’s biggest risk is governmental intervention. Because its source of assets is opaque and it has refused to audit its capital inflows, governments around the world have often threatened to investigate the company for failure to register, disclose, and comply with information-sharing requirements.
Carefully managing its governmental relations to avoid any shutdown has been Tether’s delicate dance since its inception a decade ago.
To help with managing this effort, Tether has gained a prominent ally in the largest government in the world today: Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald.
Read more: Bitcoin Policy Institute pitches US strategic bitcoin reserve
Lutnick is Co-Chair of Trump’s transition team
Endorsed by Trump and co-chairing his presidential transition committee, Lutnick has expansive powers to help Tether manage its US government relations for years to come. As co-chair of Trump’s transition team, Lutnick is uniquely able to suggest a list of appointments to various government posts at departments like the US Treasury.
Lutnick has personally vouched for Tether in the past because, in his view, his role at Cantor Fitzgerald granted him unique visibility into Tether’s asset base. He publicly assured skeptics about Tether’s reserves backing its stablecoin on several occasions, noting “I manage many, many of their assets.” Lest there be any doubt, he continued, “they have the money they say they have.”
Cantor Fitzgerald manages billions of dollars worth of the assets backing USDT, including interest-earning US Treasury bonds.
Lutnick is also a top contender for a presidential Cabinet position or even Secretary of the US Treasury.
In addition to Lutnick and his upcoming recommendations for presidential appointments of government workers who could be sympathetic to Tether, he is also friendly with the pro-stablecoin Bitcoin Policy Institute. As a leading think tank that will shape Trump’s policies for regulatory oversight of Tether, the Bitcoin Policy Institute has published lengthy policy recommendations that would favor Tether for years to come.
