Reform UK has received around £20m in donations from cryptocurrency investors, according to a new analysis of Electoral Commission records by The Independent.
People with links to the crypto sector have provided almost 60% of the party’s funding since the start of 2024, making digital-currency investors one of the most important sources of money behind Farage’s party. The largest sums came from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, who’s donated millions directly to Reform and separately gave Farage the £5m personal payment currently under parliamentary scrutiny. Other donors include Ben Delo, co-founder of crypto trading platform BitMEX, and several investors and entrepreneurs connected to bitcoin and digital finance.
This lands at a genuinely sensitive time for Reform, already facing scrutiny over donations, financial declarations and several people connected to its funding. Reform says all donations were checked properly and accepted in line with Electoral Commission rules: “Reform takes pride in its stringent vetting of donations and always ensures that the Electoral Commission guidelines on donations, as set out in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, are strictly followed.”
Harborne accounts for the biggest share by far
The Independent calculates Harborne’s given around £15m to Reform, including several multi-million-pound donations. Electoral Commission records show £9m from Harborne in July 2025, another £3m in November 2025, and a further £3m in January this year.
He’s also given money directly to Farage personally. That separate £5m payment is currently under examination by Parliament’s standards commissioner after questions over whether it should have been declared as a gift. Farage insists it was purely personal. That inquiry resumed following his re-election in the Clacton byelection earlier this month. The £20m identified by The Independent doesn’t even include more than £600,000 in additional payments and donations linked to the crypto sector that Farage declared personally.
Reform has also taken millions from other crypto investors
Harborne isn’t the only major digital-currency donor here. Ben Delo gave the party two separate £2m donations this year, with Electoral Commission records confirming one £2m donation accepted in January. Maria Rost, wife of US crypto investor John Rost, has made a series of donations worth a combined £125,000. Bitcoin investor Simon William Smith gave Reform £116,000 before the 2024 election, and Oscar Townsley, founder of bitcoin derivatives company A1X, donated £30,000 last year.
This funding has dramatically increased the money available to Reform. Electoral Commission figures show the party received more than £9.9m during the first three months of 2026, substantially more than Labour or the Conservatives over the same period, more than £9.2m of it from private donations rather than public funding.
Reform has pushed for a ‘crypto revolution’
These donations are drawing extra attention because Reform’s also adopted some of the most crypto-friendly policies of any major British party. Farage has argued Britain should become a major global centre for crypto trading and digital finance. At a bitcoin conference in Las Vegas, he promised a Reform government would introduce a Cryptoassets and Digital Finance Bill, with lower taxes on crypto profits and a Treasury bitcoin reserve. That draft legislation has since quietly disappeared from Reform’s website, according to The Independent. Farage’s also personally invested in the sector, holding shares in Stack BTC, a British bitcoin treasury company.
There’s no evidence Reform’s policies were adopted specifically in exchange for donations, parties commonly attract money from donors who already broadly agree with their politics. The sheer scale of the connection between one industry and a party’s finances has still prompted calls for closer scrutiny.
Labour raises questions over influence
Labour’s seized on the figures. Party chair Bridget Phillipson accused Farage of avoiding scrutiny and questioned the relationship between Reform’s funding and its policies, pointing specifically to Harborne’s £5m payment to Farage alongside Reform’s support for lower crypto taxes. Labour MP Stella Creasy has separately called for tighter limits on political donations, telling The Independent that large donations from a small number of individuals can give wealthy people disproportionate influence over British politics. Creasy’s seeking an amendment that would cap how much any one person can donate. The government’s already introduced a temporary ban on cryptocurrency donations themselves and proposed tighter rules on money from British citizens living overseas.
Experts say the scale is genuinely unusual
Academics specialising in political finance have flagged how concentrated this is. Stuart Wilks-Heeg, professor of politics at the University of Liverpool, called it significant, saying the amounts involved are among the largest political donations seen in Britain, and that donors typically give because they share an ideology, want influence, or hope for favourable policy down the line. Sam Power, a political finance expert at the University of Bristol, said Reform’s ability to attract such large sums is unusual for a party of its size: “We have never in British politics seen a party of that shape and size secure the kind of income that they have.”
Reform says donations are properly vetted
Reform rejects any suggestion its funding arrangements breach political finance rules, and there’s no allegation in The Independent’s analysis that the £20m was unlawfully accepted. The questions instead sit alongside everything else already circling Reform’s finances this year, how heavily the party now relies on a small number of wealthy donors connected to one industry, while simultaneously promoting policies that could directly benefit that same industry. That scrutiny is likely to keep building as Reform tries presenting itself as a government-in-waiting and prepares a much more detailed economic programme ahead of the next election.
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