NASHVILLE — Financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald will open a bitcoin financing business, CEO Howard Lutnick said at the Bitcoin Conference Saturday.

"We are going to launch with $2 billion in lending," Lutnick said, and increase the facility in $2 billion tranches as needed. He later added: "We are going to welcome bitcoin into the financing family of the global financial markets."

The business will provide leverage to bitcoin holders, according to a press release .

Cantor Fitzgerald's new lending facility isn't its first step into crypto; It already does business with stablecoin issuer Tether. The firm additionally owns a "s***load" of bitcoin, Lutnick said.

Cantor Fitzgerald is well known on Wall Street as one of the world's biggest bond brokerages and already handles U.S. Treasury trading with the biggest stablecoin issuer, Tether.