A Friday report revealed that a large portion of Tether’s bond portfolio is managed by one of the major Wall Street firms—Cantor Fitzgerald. The privately-held firm headed by Howard Lutnick is best known as a bond-trading house and one of the 24 primary dealers of US government securities.

More Than A Half of Tether’s Stablecoin-Backing Portfolio Managed by Cantor Fitzgerald

A report from Friday revealed that $39 billion worth of bonds belonging to the stablecoin issuer Tether is being managed by Cantor Fitzgerald—one of Wall Street’s major companies. The USDT issuer revealed in a recent report it has around $67 billion worth of assets backing its token. USDT is the world’s largest stablecoin with a market cap of just over $68 billion.

Cantor Fitzgerald is one of Wall Street’s 24 primary dealers of US Treasuries and a leading bond trader. The privately held firm was established in 1945 by Bernard Gerald Cantor and John Fitzgerald and was initially envisioned as a broker and an investment banker. Currently, it has more than 5,000 institutional clients.

Cantor Fitzgerald’s involvement with Tether signals the willingness of established financial institutions to work with the crypto industry, despite the recent setbacks. While institutional participation in the digital assets sector was severely impacted by 2022’s “crypto winter” and hit record lows after the collapse of FTX. However, there were indications already in January that the trend was bound to reverse.

Tether Reports $700 Million Profit in Q4

The news of Tether’s involvement with Cantor Fitzgerald comes only a day after the stablecoin issuer published its Q4 report. According to the publication, the company achieved $700 million in profit in the quarter. Furthermore, Tether revealed holding assets worth just over $67 billion and having consolidated liabilities of $66 billion—almost entirely represented by the issued digital token.

Tether’s report also announced it had succeeded in its goal of eliminating its commercial paper—set last August—by the end of 2022. Commercial paper constitutes a form of short-term unsecured debt generally in the form of promissory notes issued by companies. The attestation of Tether’s holdings was provided by an audit firm called BDO Italia.

Tether partnered up with BDO last August when it published its first asset reserves report with the accounting firm. At the time, the stablecoin issuer also pledged to provide such reports monthly rather than quarterly in an effort to boost transparency and credibility—particularly in the wake of diminished confidence in stablecoins in the aftermath of the LUNA collapse.

This article originally appeared on The Tokenist

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