When Your Mining JV Gets Rugged: Swan Bitcoin Subpoenas a 'Ghosting' Bank and the Commerce Secretary

Swan Bitcoin has dropped a legal grenade in a New York court, filing for permission to subpoena Cantor Fitzgerald and its ex-CEO, current U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. This discovery request is the ammo Swan wants for its overseas legal battle against Tether-appointed directors of 2040 Energy—a Bitcoin mining joint venture that now looks less like a partnership and more like a hostile takeover target.

The venture, 2040 Energy, was the classic setup: Tether brought the stablecoin stack, and Swan brought the operational know-how. According to Swan's filing, that deal was quietly unraveled by a conspiracy between Swan's then-CIO Raphael Zagury and Tether's now-CIO Zachary Lyons, proving that in crypto, your co-founder might just be your future adversary.

The alleged plot was detailed in planning notes left on Swan's own servers, outlining a coordinated mass resignation with legal cover from Tether. On August 8, 2024, the plan executed flawlessly, with thirteen Swan employees walking out in hours, allegedly after downloading a treasure trove of confidential documents on their way out the door—a classic case of "taking your toys and going home," if the toys were proprietary mining data.

Faster than you can say "hard fork," Tether installed Proton Management to run the show, an entity conveniently staffed by the very same defecting employees. Swan CEO Cory Klippsten was promptly ousted from 2040's leadership. By December 2024, Tether's directors had greenlit a related-party sale of the venture's mining assets to a Tether subsidiary at what Swan calls a firesale price, turning a mining JV into what looks like an inside job.

So why subpoena a big-shot bank and a Commerce Secretary? Swan's filing pins them close to the action. Before the great resignation, Tether's chairman Giancarlo Devasini introduced Klippsten to Lutnick to chat about a potential Swan IPO, leading Swan to share its most sensitive mining and IPO secrets with Cantor.

After the mass ghosting by Swan's team, Cantor Fitzgerald itself seemingly performed a ghosting maneuver of its own, cutting off all contact with Swan without a word. Cantor then popped up working on Tether-related deals, acting as placement agent for Tether's investment in Rumble and providing the SPAC for Bitcoin treasury firm Twenty One Capital—a real "it's not you, it's me" moment, if "me" is a nine-figure banking client.

Klippsten's notes from chats with Devasini add more spice, quoting Devasini saying Lutnick claimed to have worked to block every stablecoin bill in Congress and was effectively "working full time for Tether." For a Commerce Secretary, that's quite a side hustle.

The ties bind tighter: a public UCC filing from October 2025 shows Tether as the collateral agent for all assets of the Lutnick family trust, which owns most of Cantor. Bloomberg reported this trust borrowed an undisclosed sum from Tether to buy out Lutnick's stake when he divested for ethics rules—because nothing says "arm's length" like your family office being financially intertwined with the world's largest stablecoin issuer.

This subpoena is another cannonball fired in the ongoing legal war between Swan and the stablecoin behemoth. Tether, for its part, has previously denied any wrongdoing. The court's ruling will decide if Swan gets to peek into Cantor's comms with Tether and friends, potentially revealing whether this was just business or a masterclass in corporate subterfuge.