Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Friday, November 22nd.

Today on Forbes, The Most Hated Guy on Wall Street, the unspoken story around Howard Lutnik,

Trump's Pick for Commerce Secretary.

On the morning of July 27th, Cantor Fitzgerald's longtime CEO, Howard Lutnik, took the stage at Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville,

Tennessee, where thousands of crypto fanatics had gathered to listen to royalty from the MAGA

universe, including Vivek Ramoswamy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump himself.

During Lutnik's 20-minute talk, the burly, balding 63-year-old made an impassioned

defense of tether, a cryptocurrency attached to the U.S. dollar, and announced the launch

of an initial $2 billion financing business to provide leverage to Bitcoin investors.

But before he began proselytizing, he retold a familiar story.

On September 11, 2001, he was dropping off his oldest son on his first day of kindergarten,

when a plane struck the World Trade Center, where Cantor Fitzgerald's headquarters sat on the 101st

to 105th floors. All 658 of his employees in the building that morning were killed,

including Lutnik's brother, Gary, his best friend Doug,

28 sets of brothers and one set of sisters.

Describing the close-knit workplace,

Lutnik recalled his hiring strategy, saying,

quote, we had an unusual model.

We only wanted to work with people that we liked. Out of tragedy came purpose.

Lutnik promised to give 25% of the firm's profits to families of the deceased for five years,

eventually shelling out $180 million.

23 years later, Lutnik still sees himself as a model of patriotism and determination.

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