Why the crypto community loves Howard Lutnick, Trump’s choice for secretary of commerce
Donald Trump’s selection on Tuesday of Howard Lutnick as Secretary of Commerce brought excitement from the cryptocurrency sector.
No surprise there. Lutnick has long advocated that cryptocurrency be treated on par with other financial assets. “Bitcoin is like gold and should be free trade everywhere in the world,” he said at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville in July. “And as the largest retailer in the world we will do everything in our power to make it so. Bitcoin … should trade like gold everywhere in the world without exception and without limitation. “
As commerce secretary, Lutnick will also have regular conversations with CEOs and the business community and can be an influential evangelist for crypto adoption. He certainly made no attempt to hide his enthusiasm for cryptocurrency. His investment firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, oversees some Tether stablecoin reserves, while many other Wall Street firms shun the crypto. He is also bullish on Bitcoin, although he has been dismissive of other tokens, saying they are “nothing.”
At the same conference, he boasted that Cantor “owns Bitcoin” and announced the launch of a Bitcoin lending program, which aims to provide “a benefit to those who own Bitcoin.” He loaned Cantor Fitzgerald a $2 billion loan as part of the plan.
Two months after the conference, Lutnick went on Fox Business and urged regulators to classify Bitcoin as a commodity, which would allow it to be treated in the same way as gold and oil. In that same interview, he expressed concern that regulators in the Biden administration failed to understand the importance of Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry.
“Let’s face it: they don’t even know how to do crypto and digital at all, and they don’t know; they still don’t understand how important it is to fix it,” he said.
Lutnick’s appointment as chairman of Trump’s transition team, before the announcement of the secretary of commerce, was announced by Alex Grieve, head of government affairs at Paradigm, a crypto investment firm, who wrote in a post on X that Lutnick’s inclusion in the team is “Big for crypto.”
Now, Lutnick, if confirmed by the Senate, will oversee Trump’s tariff and trade agenda as well as divisions such as the Census Bureau and the Economic Development Administration. That’s an important role for finance, but one that has no direct impact on the future of cryptocurrency. It’s not exactly powerful, though.
The Deploying American Blockchains Act of 2023, which passed the House earlier this year, would give the commerce secretary the power to “take necessary and appropriate actions to promote the competitiveness of the United States. [in] blockchain technology or other distributed ledger technology. “The bill is currently in the Senate.
Regardless of the outcome of the bill, Lutnick has long been close to Trump and his enthusiasm for cryptocurrency likely influenced the president-elect. In May, Trump’s campaign began accepting crypto donations and began building what he called a “crypto army” to win over new voters.
He also won the support of fellow crypto enthusiast Elon Musk, who had asked Lutnick to be Treasurer The Secretary, writing that he would “make a change” if he got the job, added that “Business as usual is making America weak, so we need to change somehow.”
Robert F. Kennedy joined in the praise, too, writing “Bitcoin is the currency of freedom, a hedge against inflation for middle-class Americans, an antidote to the devaluation of the world’s reserve currency, and a negative national exit. debt. Bitcoin could have no stronger advocate than Howard Lutnick. “
