Tether and BitMEX backers give £7m to Reform UK

Electoral Commission records published Thursday show two donations to Reform UK: a $4 million contribution from Christopher Harborne and a $5.4 million contribution from Ben Delo, together amounting to about £7 million ($9.4 million). Harborne holds a stake in stablecoin issuer Tether; Delo is a co-founder of crypto exchange BitMEX. Delo is a first-time donor to the party and the new contributions lift Harborne’s donations to Reform UK and Farage-related causes to roughly $20 million over the past year.

Reform UK’s first-quarter receipts rose sharply from the same period last year. The party received roughly six times the funds it did a year earlier, when it reported about $2 million in receipts. By comparison, the Labour and Conservative parties each recorded about $5.4 million in the quarter covered by the Electoral Commission. The commission’s data show total political funding across parties more than doubled compared with the prior year’s quarter.

Harborne separately gave Farage a $6.7 million personal gift that is the subject of a parliamentary standards inquiry into whether it should have been registered. Farage wrote that the payment was given before he returned to Parliament and was ‘used to pay for personal security.’ He later described the gift as a reward for his campaigning on the UK’s exit from the EU. The parliamentary inquiry is ongoing.

Reform UK has promoted policies favorable to cryptocurrencies. It was the first UK party to accept Bitcoin donations. Policy proposals from Nigel Farage include cutting capital gains tax on crypto from 24% to 10% and asking the Bank of England to consider holding Bitcoin as a reserve asset.

The donations come amid higher political spending by figures in the crypto industry internationally. In the United States, crypto-backed political action committees have spent millions to support candidates in recent contests. Regulators and ethics watchdogs in several jurisdictions have increased scrutiny of political donations linked to the sector.

Electoral Commission records list the donors and amounts but do not show conditions attached to the contributions. Reform UK has not announced any new policy commitments tied to the donations beyond its existing platform.