---

Two of Britain's wealthiest figures from the crypto industry have donated a combined £72 million to Reform UK, delivering what are expected to set or match records as the largest individual political donations in British history in back-to-back transactions.

BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo and Tether-linked investor Christopher Harborne each contributed £36 million to Nigel Farage's party (Farage is Reform UK's leader and rose to national prominence as the driving force behind UKIP and the Brexit Party), according to reports published September 12, 2026.

The timing is legally significant: the UK government is actively moving to ban crypto donations to political parties, with a retroactive cut-off date of March 25, 2026, meaning these September contributions could fall within the scope of legislation requiring their return.

The Representation of the People Bill, which contains the proposed crypto donation ban, cleared its remaining House of Commons stages on September 2 and has now been sent to the House of Lords for consideration. If enacted as written, the bill would treat any crypto donation to a registered party as coming from an impermissible donor, regardless of the donor's individual eligibility. Parties would have 30 days after enactment to return such donations.

Delo, who was born in Sheffield and earned a double first in Mathematics and Computer Science from Oxford, co-founded BitMEX in 2014 alongside Arthur Hayes and Sam Reed. The exchange grew into the world's largest crypto derivatives platform by volume, and Delo is credited with inventing the perpetual swap contract, a product some analysts have described as possibly the most successful derivatives product in the history of capitalism. The Times named him the UK's youngest self-made billionaire in 2018. He pleaded guilty in 2022 to violations of the US Bank Secrecy Act related to anti-money laundering failures at BitMEX, then received a full presidential pardon from Donald Trump in March 2025. Reports indicate he recently relocated from Hong Kong to the UK, in part to establish donation eligibility ahead of any cap.

Harborne, a Yorkshire-born businessman who has lived in Thailand for more than two decades and holds Thai citizenship under the name Chakrit Sakunkrit, had already given approximately £22 million to Reform UK before this latest contribution, making him the party's largest donor by a significant margin. He is ranked sixth on the 2026 Sunday Times Rich List, with an estimated fortune of £18.177 billion, most of it tied to his roughly 12% stake in DigFinex, the Hong Kong-registered parent company of Tether (USDT) and the crypto exchange Bitfinex. His lawyers have stated that he holds no operational role in either Tether or Bitfinex. Separately, a £5 million personal gift from Harborne to Nigel Farage remains under investigation by the parliamentary standards watchdog for non-disclosure.

Harborne described his £36 million gift as "a philanthropic gift to our country" and said his decision to match Delo's donation was driven by competitive instinct, adding that he hoped others would follow. Reform UK Deputy Leader Richard Tice said the funds would allow the party to hire campaign managers, researchers, and policy staff at a scale that puts it on equal footing with Labour and the Conservatives. The concentration of funding behind Reform is notable: research from Democracy for Sale found that approximately 75% of all Reform UK donations since 2019 have come from just three individuals, with Harborne alone accounting for over two-thirds of the party's total fundraising. More than 62,000 people have signed a petition calling for political donation caps, a figure that reflects growing public pressure on party finance rules. It is also worth noting that Reform UK was reportedly the first European political party to formally accept cryptocurrency donations, beginning in 2024, a step that now places it at the centre of the current legislative scrutiny.

The UK government's push to restrict crypto in political finance comes from concerns documented in the Rycroft Review, commissioned in December 2025 to examine foreign financial interference. The review flagged the potential for anonymity exploitation and so-called "smurfing," a technique where AI is used to break large illegal donations into thousands of untraceable micro-payments to obscure their origin, as posing an unacceptably high risk to democratic integrity. The bill also encompasses two related but distinct legislative proposals: the government's original retroactive moratorium, which runs from March 25, 2026, and a separate push by Labour MPs led by Liam Byrne for a permanent ban via amendment. These differ in scope and authorship, and both are part of the broader legislative picture now before Parliament.

Bitcoin was trading at approximately $78,345 as of September 8, down roughly $33,730 year over year, with a market cap near $1.33 trillion. US spot Bitcoin ETFs pulled in $3.52 billion in August alone, a reminder that institutional appetite for crypto exposure has not diminished even as Western governments tighten their political finance rules around the asset class.

The legislative backdrop is further complicated by a separate House of Lords vote on September 10, which passed 194 to 138 and would require the government to produce a formal national digital asset strategy. That vote signals a parliamentary appetite for crypto engagement that sits in direct tension with the donation restrictions moving through the same legislative process.

For readers outside the UK, Harborne's Tether connection is the part of this story that carries the most practical weight. USDT is the dominant stablecoin across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, where it is widely used for remittances, cross-border trade, and savings in markets with limited access to dollar banking. Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa rank among the highest USDT usage countries globally. A major shareholder in Tether's parent company now stands as the largest financial backer of a leading British political party. That linkage raises questions about how UK policymakers might approach Tether regulation in the years ahead. South Africa, Nigeria, and several South Asian jurisdictions have cited UK and EU frameworks as reference points in their own developing crypto regulations, which means the UK's legislative outcome carries influence well beyond its borders.

The House of Lords is expected to scrutinise both the donation ban and the broader bill in the coming weeks. If the Lords pass amendments or delay passage, the legal status of the Delo and Harborne contributions could remain unresolved for months. The stakes extend beyond party finance: the bill's outcome will shape how one of the world's most systemically significant stablecoins is regulated in a country whose policy choices reverberate across multiple emerging-market jurisdictions.