Reform UK receives millions from crypto investors – then champions crypto

Reform UK, which has received funding from crypto investors Christopher Harborne and Simon William Smith, has been singing crypto’s praises.

Imitating Donald Trump’s MAGA playbook, Nigel Farage and his party Reform UK have spent this year cosying up to the crypto industry. 

On 12 November, Farage wrote an article for City AM declaring that “Reform’s Britain will lead the digital money revolution”. 

“Crypto is no longer a fringe experiment,” he explained in the article, adding: “It is reshaping payments, finance and global commerce. At the heart of this revolution are stablecoins, digital tokens pegged one-to-one to real-world currencies like the pound or the dollar. They make payments instant, cheap and predictable. Countries that embrace them are surging ahead. If Britain hesitates we will fall behind.”

Farage went on to trumpet his party’s Cryptoassets and Digital Finance Bill, a blueprint for legislation it would enact if in government. Under this, Reform would, Farage promised, “slash capital gains tax on cryptoassets such as Bitcoin from 24 percent to 10 percent” and “create a Bitcoin digital reserve at the Bank of England”. 

This is just the latest example of Farage giving his whole-hearted commitment to the crypto industry.

On 13 October, he spoke at a crypto conference in London, reassuring those in attendance of his intentions. “When it comes to your industry, then I am your champion,” he told the room. “What we’re going to need is a ‘Big Bang 2’, with this space being right at the epicentre of what we’re trying to do.”

Ten days later, on 23 October, Farage announced that his party has started accepting crypto donations – about which experts have raised serious concerns over the difficulty in tracing the original source of funds.

Vested interests

It is unclear why Farage has become increasingly vocal in his support for the crypto industry. Potentially relevant, however, is that his party has received millions from crypto investors. 

Most notably, the Thailand-based British businessman Christopher Harborne gave around £10 million in 2019 and 2020, when Reform was known as the Brexit Party.

Since the last general election, Harborne has also been generous to Farage personally. Last July, he covered the £32,000 cost of a visit Farage and one of his staffers made to the United States. In January, he paid for another trip the Reform leader made to America, this time for Trump’s inauguration, which cost over £27,000. 

Harborne is invested in crypto, being a shareholder in the crypto exchange Bitfinex and the stablecoin Tether, according to the Financial Times.

It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the Reform leader has taken an interest in Tether. As Private Eye pointed out at the time, speaking on LBC in September, Farage trumpeted that “Tether is about to be valued as a $500 billion company,” adding: “This world is enormous, and I’ve been urging for years that London should embrace it. We should become a global trading centre for this stuff.” 

Another Reform donor with crypto interests is Simon William Smith, who handed the party £58,000 last year.

On his LinkedIn, Smith details that he has been “invested in Bitcoin since 2013” and “runs a team of developers that he funds from his crypto profits”.

He is the founder of the company FanFares.io, which enables podcasters to sell their content in exchange for Bitcoin.

Risky business

While Reform is keen to highlight the positives of crypto, the party is rather less interested in acknowledging its downsides. Of particular concern is the money-laundering risk cryptocurrencies pose, in large part due to the anonymity they enable.

The stablecoin Tether, for instance, which Farage promoted on LBC in September, has been described as a money-launderer’s “dream currency” by the Economist, which explained:

“There aren’t many other products that are as useful to criminals, and as much of a threat to the financial system, that have been allowed to flourish with so little regulation.”

If Farage would like to know more about how crypto can help facilitate money-laundering, he can always ask his close friend and ally, George Cottrell, who in 2017 was convicted of wire fraud in the US, following a case involving the proposed use of Bitcoin.

This episode didn’t put Farage off his friendship with Cottrell, however. In December, Cottrell, whose mother, Fiona, has donated £750,000 to Reform, paid £15,000 for a flight Farage took to California, where he met Elon Musk.