Tether Stakeholder Gave Farage Undisclosed $6.7M Gift Amid Reform UK Crypto Funding Scrutiny

The personal gift to the Reform UK leader from billionaire Christopher Harborne comes amid scrutiny over crypto industry political funding.

In brief

• Christopher Harborne, who holds a 12% stake in Tether, gave Nigel Farage an undisclosed £5 million personal gift in 2024.
• The payment was intended to cover security costs for the Reform UK leader, Farage said.
• The revelation emerges weeks after the UK banned political crypto donations over transparency concerns.

Christopher Harborne, a billionaire with a 12% stake in USDT stablecoin issuer Tether, gave Nigel Farage a previously undisclosed $6.7 million (£5 million) gift in 2024.

The donation, first reported in The Guardian, was to pay for his personal security, Farage later told The Daily Telegraph.

The payment was reportedly structured as a personal gift and was never officially disclosed under UK campaign finance laws. At the time Farage received the gift, he had not announced plans to run as a Member of Parliament; he subsequently ran for and won the seat of Clacton.

The gift is separate from Harborne's £12 million in donations to the Reform UK party itself. Previous disclosures show Harborne made a £9 million donation last year—the UK's biggest-ever political donation at the time—and a further £3 million contribution revealed in March.

Crypto political funding in the UK

While neither of Harborne’s donations to Reform UK were made in the form of cryptocurrency, they have added to mounting scrutiny over the role of the crypto industry in political funding in the UK—which Harborne’s gift to Farage will do nothing to dispel.

Last month, the UK government announced an immediate moratorium on crypto assets as a form of political financing, following the government-commissioned Rycroft review into foreign electoral interference.

At the time, Reform UK was the only major political party in the country to accept crypto donations. It received the UK’s first-ever crypto donation in October 2025, according to reporting from The Observer, though no declaration was made to the Electoral Commission.

Responding to the ban, Farage accused Labour ministers of being “out of touch.” Prior to the ban, multiple Labour MPs including parliamentary committee chairs had come out in support of a ban on crypto donations, which Labour MP Rushanara Ali called a vector for “foreign interference in our democracy.”

Farage has positioned himself as a “champion” for cryptocurrency, calling for lower capital gains taxes on crypto and for the establishment of a national Bitcoin reserve.

Harborne, who resides in Thailand, isn’t the only overseas crypto billionaire to donate to Reform UK. Earlier this month, Hong Kong-based BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo, who previously pleaded guilty in the U.S. to breaches of the Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money laundering failures, revealed a $5.4 million (£4 million) donation to Farage's party. Delo, who paid a $10 million criminal fine over the case, was subsequently pardoned by U.S. President Donald Trump.

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