Crypto Billionaires Hand Reform UK $97M in Record Donations

Two crypto billionaires have given Nigel Farage’s Reform UK £72 million ($97 million) in two days, more than every British party raised last year combined.

BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo went first, announcing £36 million in the Telegraph on Friday, the biggest single donation ever made to a British party and more than four times the £8 million he had already given this year.

He is giving the equivalent of £1 million a month until the latest date Labour could call an election in 2029, but paying up front in case the government caps large donations.

Harborne matches Delo’s donation

Christopher Harborne, the Thailand-based Tether investor who has given Reform £15 million since the last election, matched it Saturday. His “competitive spirit” prompted it, he wrote in the Telegraph, adding that he expected “nothing, personally”.

Reform said the money would hire “the brightest and best minds to work on policy” and 400 campaign managers, one per target seat. The party is “now on election footing,” a spokesman said.

Neither of Delo and Harborne’s most recent donations, nor their previous ones, were made in crypto. Britain banned crypto political donations in March.

The donations land as the government weighs tighter rules. There is no limit on what UK-based donors can give, though Labour has capped gifts from Britons living overseas at £100,000 and plans the same for recent returnees. Since March, donors have needed 12 months on the electoral register to give more than £100,000 a year. Sheffield-born Delo says he will return from Hong Kong.

Both men have drawn scrutiny before. U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned Delo in 2025, three years after the BitMEX founder pleaded guilty to anti-money laundering failures at the exchange, while the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards is weighing whether Farage should have declared a £5 million personal gift from Harborne.

It arrives with Reform under criminal investigation over its funding, though not over either man’s gift. The Metropolitan Police opened an inquiry on Tuesday into allegations from Channel 4 footage of two senior aides discussing ways around the ban on foreign money, folding it into an existing probe into payments received before the last election. Reform “denies any wrongdoing and will fully cooperate,” a spokesman said.