- British investor Christopher Harborne and BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo each donated £36 million to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, a combined £72 million reported as the largest single political donation in British history.
- Delo said he wanted to give Reform “a fair fight and a level playing field”; Harborne, who said he was inspired to match him, called his gift “a philanthropic gift to our country”.
- The scale of the money has fed a push by the governing Labour Party to tighten donation rules, which Reform says its two gifts already comply with.
Two crypto billionaires have handed Nigel Farage’s Reform UK a combined £72 million (AU$135.9 million), with British investor Christopher Harborne and BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo each giving £36 million (AU$67.9 million) within about 48 hours, in what has been reported as the largest single donation in British political history.
Delo said he wanted to give Reform “a fair fight and a level playing field” against the governing Labour party and the Conservatives. Harborne, who said he was inspired to match Delo, called his own contribution “a philanthropic gift to our country”.
Farage said the money would let Reform “fight and win the next general election”, and the party said its donors wanted nothing in return, ruling out any knighthood, peerage or government contract.
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The Two Donors
Delo co-founded the crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX in 2014 and was once described as Britain’s youngest self-made billionaire. In 2022, he pleaded guilty in the United States to a Bank Secrecy Act violation for failing to maintain an anti-money-laundering program at BitMEX, and he received a full pardon from Donald Trump in March 2025.
Harborne, an early Bitcoin investor who holds a reported stake in Tether, has lived in Thailand for decades under the name Chakrit Sakunkrit and has given Reform and its Brexit Party predecessor more than £22 million (AU$41.5 million) since 2019. Both men can give at this scale because they are registered UK voters, Harborne despite living in Thailand and Delo having recently returned from Hong Kong.
Angela Rayner, of the governing Labour Party, said legislation moving through Parliament, built on a review by former civil servant Philip Rycroft, would apply retrospectively to March and give parties 60 days to return donations that break new limits on foreign and overseas-resident donors.
“You can’t buy your way into our democracy”, she said. Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick countered that the two donations were “entirely in line with the law as it is and, as far as we know, the law as it’s going to be in the future”.
Bloomberg reported that Delo structured his £36 million as £1 million a month running to the next election but paid it upfront so it could not be blocked.
Other countries are moving the other way, with Canada set to ban crypto in political donations over transparency concerns.
Read more: Bitcoin Whales Hold Record $9B in Unrealised Profits as Key Support Comes Into Focus
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