Crypto billionaires Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne each donate £36 million to Farage's Reform UK

Reform UK, the political party led by Nigel Farage, received £72 million ($97.4 million) in donations from two cryptocurrency billionaires over two days, after BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo and Tether investor Christopher Harborne each gave the party £36 million ($48.7 million). 

Delo revealed his donation in an op-ed in the Telegraph on Friday. It is the largest single donation to a British political party on record, exceeding the £10 million left to the Conservatives by Lord John Sainsbury in 2022.

Delo's article said the payment would give Reform a "level playing field" against its opponents. He had intended to give £1 million a month until the next general election, which must be held by 2029, and brought the money forward in a single payment in case the government caps donations, he said. 

"I believe it is the duty of people with broad shoulders and deep pockets to step up and help Reform to win and govern, rather than allow the British people to be trapped in the political monoculture that is driving this country off a cliff," Delo wrote.

Harborne revealed that he matched Delo's donation in his own Telegraph article published Saturday morning. He wrote that Delo had told him about the planned gift and that his own competitive streak prompted him to match it.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said he was "honoured and humbled" by Delo's donation, according to The Guardian.

The donors

Delo, 42, co-founded BitMEX in 2014 with Arthur Hayes and Samuel Reed. Delo pleaded guilty in 2022 to violating the US Bank Secrecy Act over the exchange's failure to maintain an adequate anti-money laundering program. As part of his plea, Delo agreed to a $10 million criminal fine and was sentenced to 30 months' probation. President Donald Trump pardoned him, Hayes and Reed in March 2025.

In his Friday article, Delo said US prosecutors "went after us for not keeping sufficient records on our customers" and that the exchange "ran an honest shop and never lost a penny of customer funds to a hack or a misallocation". BitMEX said in July it would wind down the platform permanently in September 2026 after a strategic review of the business and the wider crypto industry by its board.

Delo moved back to the UK from Hong Kong this year. He had already donated £8 million to Reform this year, including an initial £4 million disclosed in April.

Harborne is a British investor based in Thailand who holds an estimated 12% stake in Tether and has donated millions to Reform since 2025, including a £9 million gift that was then the largest donation to a UK party by a living person.

House of Lords will consider donation cap

The donations arrive as the UK Parliament rewrites the rules on political funding. The Representation of the People Bill would suspend donations made in cryptocurrency and cap donations from British citizens registered to vote from abroad, along with certain recently-returned citizens, at £100,000 ($135,000) a year.

The crypto suspension would apply retroactively to donations made on or after March 25, the day Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced it, and any applicable donations would have to be returned by the receiving party within 30 days of the rules taking effect.

The bill cleared the House of Commons on Sept. 2 and moved to the House of Lords on Sept. 3, according to Parliament's bill tracker. None of the donation rules would take effect until the bill passes the House of Lords and receives royal assent.

Ministers have argued that crypto payments can be difficult to trace to a real owner, making it difficult to confirm whether donations entering British politics came from a legally permissible donor. Delo, in his op-ed, wrote that restricting opposition funding is anti-democratic and amounts to election-rigging unless Labour also limits the union money that funds it.

"[Delo's] donation tonight – more for Reform on one day than the entire amount spent by Labour in the general election – shows that [the donation cap] cannot come too soon to protect British democracy," Labour MP Stella Creasy, who is pushing for the cap, told The Guardian on Friday. 

Neither donor's article revealed what form his payment took. Harborne's previous donations to Reform were made in fiat currency.

Reform's crypto funding under scrutiny

Reform became the first UK political party to accept crypto donations in May 2025, when Farage pledged to introduce a bill that would create a Bank of England bitcoin reserve and would cut capital gains tax on crypto to 10% if his party wins power.

Farage received an undeclared £5 million personal gift from Harborne in 2024, prompting a parliamentary standards investigation. Following that inquiry and a second probe into support from George Cottrell, a convicted fraudster linked to offshore crypto bookmaker Tether.bet, he resigned from his Clacton seat in July. Farage has said he did nothing wrong.

The Metropolitan Police last week opened a criminal investigation into Reform's funding after a Channel 4 News broadcast showed senior party figures discussing routes for money from an American donor. Two Reform staffers stepped down. The party has denied wrongdoing.