BitMEX Co-Founder Ben Delo Makes Record $49M Donation to Reform UK, a Bitcoin (BTC) Donor First

£36M Gift Sets a British Record

BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo has given £36 million (roughly $49 million) to Nigel Farage's Reform UK, the largest single donation ever made to a British political party. The gift, disclosed in a Telegraph op-ed on Friday, is more than four times the £8 million Delo had already contributed to the party this year, and it single-handedly dwarfs what most British parties raise across an entire year. Delo framed the payment as a way to ensure a “fair fight” at the next national vote. On paper it works out to roughly £1 million per month until the latest date Labour could call an election in 2029, but Delo opted to settle the full sum up front in case the government caps large donations before that schedule completes. Farage said he was “honored and humbled” that Delo had shown such confidence in Reform, calling it the only party able to reverse Britain's decline. The donation lands months after Farage resigned his parliamentary seat in July amid a scandal over crypto-linked gifts and donations, then won the resulting by-election with 63% of the vote. Until this week Delo ranked as Reform's second-biggest donor, behind only Christopher Harborne. Sheffield-born, he says he intends to return to Britain from Hong Kong to back the party he is now bankrolling at unprecedented scale. Delo co-founded BitMEX in 2014 and built it into one of the world's largest crypto derivatives venues before US prosecutors moved against its founders, and his giving had already placed him among Britain's most consequential political financiers. The episode has made Reform the focal point of a broader debate over how fortunes created across the digital-asset economy — from decentralized exchange infrastructure to Ethereum (ETH) development and Solana (SOL) ecosystems — flow into mainstream politics.

Harborne Matches Within 24 Hours

Christopher Harborne, the Thailand-based investor with a stake in stablecoin issuer Tether, matched Delo within 24 hours with an identical £36 million donation. Writing in the Telegraph on Saturday, Harborne credited his “competitive spirit” for the move and said he expected “nothing, personally” in return. He had already given Reform £15 million since the last general election, including £9 million in August last year, which had made him the party's largest donor before this weekend. Reform said the combined windfall would pay for “the brightest and best minds to work on policy” and fund 400 campaign managers, one assigned to each target seat, with a spokesman confirming the party is “now on election footing.” Notably, neither man's donation involved cryptocurrency of any kind. Britain banned crypto political contributions in March, and since then donors have needed 12 months on the electoral register before giving more than £100,000 a year, while Labour has capped gifts from Britons living overseas at £100,000. The backdrop remains tense: the Metropolitan Police opened an inquiry on Tuesday into footage showing two senior Reform aides discussing ways around the ban on foreign money, folding it into an existing probe into payments received before the last election — though neither donor's gift falls within that investigation, and the party denies any wrongdoing and says it will cooperate fully. Scrutiny also reaches Farage personally, as the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards weighs whether he should have declared a £5 million personal gift from Harborne. Both billionaires carry their own records: Delo pleaded guilty in the United States to anti-money-laundering failures at BitMEX, paid a $10 million fine in 2022 without serving prison time, and was pardoned by President Donald Trump in March 2025 alongside co-founders Arthur Hayes and Samuel Reed. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on MEXC.

Crypto Wealth Meets Westminster

For COINOTAG, the two-day sequence amounts to a stress test of Britain's political-finance regime by Web3-era wealth. With crypto donations themselves banned since March, the sector's richest figures are moving vast sums through traditional channels faster than regulators can respond. The £72 million combined total — exceeding the roughly £69 million every UK party raised across last year — all but guarantees that money made in the Bitcoin (BTC) era, and the rules meant to police it, will sit at the center of Britain's next election campaign. Whether Parliament tightens donation law or leaves the door open may define crypto's political position for years.