One donor supplied nearly a quarter of every pound accepted by every political party in Britain in the second quarter of 2026, and the money came from a crypto fortune.
Electoral Commission figures published on 3 September show UK-registered parties reported accepting £17,085,354 in donations and public funds between April and June. Ben Delo, who co-founded the crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX, gave Reform UK £4 million of it, according to the Commission’s donor records.
What the Register Shows
Reform UK accepted £5,333,657 in donations over the quarter, excluding £103,703 in public funds. Delo’s £4 million is 75% of that figure, and 72% of the £5,552,360 the party reported in total.
That made Reform the largest recipient of donations of any party in the quarter. Labour accepted £3,588,506 and the Conservatives £2,810,690. On total reported income Reform also came first, at £5,552,360 against the Conservatives’ £4,174,098.
The quarter was a quieter one overall. The £17.1 million accepted across all parties compares with £24.5 million in the first quarter of 2026, though it is well up on the £11.3 million recorded in the same period a year earlier.
One Donor, Nearly a Quarter of Everything
Set Delo’s £4 million against the £17,085,354 accepted by all parties combined and it comes to 23.4% of the total. That is CNR’s own arithmetic from the Commission’s published figures rather than a number the Commission presents, but the concentration is the striking feature of this quarter’s register.
Parties only report donations above £11,180, so the published totals are not the whole picture. Smaller gifts appear in annual accounts instead. What the register does capture is the large money, and in this quarter one person accounted for most of it.
The Crypto Ban Does Not Reach Cash
Britain moved this year to stop political donations being made in cryptocurrency. Reform had been the only major party accepting them.
None of Delo’s money took that form. Both payments were cash, received on 17 April and 30 April and banked by the party the following day. The rule governs the payment method, not where the wealth came from, so a fortune built in crypto reaches a political party perfectly lawfully as long as it arrives as pounds.
That is the practical limit of the measure, and it is worth understanding for anyone reading the ban as a restriction on crypto money in British politics. It is a restriction on crypto as a payment rail.
A separate rule limits donations from British citizens living overseas. Reporting on how it applies to Delo has varied, and the Commission’s published register does not address individual permissibility decisions, so the position on that point is not settled from the public record alone.
Who Ben Delo Is
Delo co-founded BitMEX in 2014 and no longer runs it. In 2022 he pleaded guilty in the United States to violating the Bank Secrecy Act over anti-money laundering failures at the exchange, paying a fine and receiving probation rather than a custodial sentence. US President Donald Trump pardoned him in 2025, along with fellow co-founders Arthur Hayes and Samuel Reed.
He has since written publicly in defence of both the donations and his own case, arguing the US charge concerned conduct that would not be a criminal offence in the United Kingdom.
BitMEX itself is closing. Its owner, HDR Global Trading, said in July that the exchange would shut on 23 September following a strategic review.
Christopher Harborne, the Tether investor who has been Reform’s largest backer in previous periods, reported no donation to any party in this quarter.
All of the donations described here appear in the Commission’s public register as accepted and reported in the ordinary way. The Commission’s director of electoral administration and regulation, Jackie Killeen, said alongside the figures that the UK system has high levels of transparency, while noting that parts of it need strengthening and pointing to reforms before Parliament that would tighten donation controls.
