Billionaire Delo gives record £36 million to Farage’s Reform UK
The donation arrives at a time when Reform’s campaign financing has attracted unprecedented scrutiny, including from the police.
BitMEX founder Ben Delo pledged £36 million (S$61.6 million) to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, a record donation designed to help the insurgent political party fend off its critics while turbo-charging its attempts to gain power at the next British general election.
The gift amounts to £1 million a month between now and August 2029, the latest date at which Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham can schedule the next national vote. It arrives at a time when Reform’s campaign financing has attracted unprecedented scrutiny, including from the police.
Delo said in an article in The Telegraph newspaper late on Sept 11 that he is front-loading the campaign financing into one lump sum in order to bypass further changes Labour might seek to make in party funding rules.The crypto entrepreneur recently moved back to Britain in order to dodge a new £100,000 cap on gifts from overseas that Labour has been legislating to introduce.
The money highlights the new kind of donor that Reform’s anti-establishment rhetoric is attracting to British politics, as well as the threat the right-wing party poses to the Labour-Tory duopoly that has dominated Britain for the past century.Reform was founded less than 10 years ago by Farage, a former metals trader and career politician.
Despite winning only a handful of seats at the last general election, Reform surged to the top of the national polls in April last year, a position it has relinquished only recently amid a bounce in support for Labour sparked by Burnham replacing Keir Starmer as party leader and prime minister.
Labour and the Conservatives “have entrenched advantages that Reform cannot hope to match,” Delo wrote. “If a few people like me are willing to contribute to creating a more level playing field that is not undermining democracy – it is supporting it, on behalf of millions of Britons that the establishment has let down.”
Delo said he was retired, having exited the crypto industry, and that “you’ll either believe me or you won’t when I say I’m not supporting Reform for personal gain”.
His gift dwarfs the previous record donation in British politics, the £10 million that John Sainsbury bequeathed the Conservatives when he died in 2022. It is four times the previous record donation by a living donor, which was also made to Reform last year in the form of a £9 million donation given by another crypto investor, Christopher Harborne.
Without including Delo’s latest gift, Reform had taken almost £34 million in donations since July 4, 2024, the date of the last election, according to Electoral Commission data. That compares with more than £21 million for Labour and its sister Co-operative Party combined, and just over £24 million for the Conservatives.
Even before the latest gift, Reform had out-raised Westminster’s more established parties, according to declared donations. But it has also been the subject of official investigations into undeclared funds – allegations which Farage has variously denied and rejected the British Parliament’s authority to adjudicate on.
Police are investigating gifts made to the party in the run-up to the 2024 general election, as well as more recent allegations that followed a report aired last week by Channel 4 News that appeared to show senior Reform officials discussing how to circumvent electoral law to accept foreign donations. The party has denied wrongdoing.
Farage himself is also currently being investigated by the British Parliament’s standards commissioner into questions about whether he failed to disclose £5 million he personally received from Harborne before returning to politics in 2024. He has argued its unconditional nature would make it exempt from strict campaign finance laws.
Delo, a University of Oxford mathematics and computer science graduate, helped set up BitMEX in 2014 after creating high-frequency trading systems for JPMorgan Chase in Hong Kong.
The platform quickly grew to be one of the most popular trading sites, offering leveraged bets on major crypto tokens including Bitcoin. He was convicted in the US four years ago, along with his fellow co-founders, of failing to put in place adequate anti money-laundering controls at his company, before receiving a pardon in 2025 from US President Donald Trump.
Delo said his aim is to help Reform prepare for government, and that his gift would ensure a “fair fight and a level playing field”.
“My conclusion from Reform’s recent troubles is that they should spend less time trying to raise funds to compete on equal terms and more time preparing for government,” Delo wrote.
“Reform will probably come into office not being polished – but unpolished is not the same as unready,” he said, adding: “It takes time to develop thought-through policies and draft legislation, and it takes real money.” BLOOMBERG
