Harborne has already donated millions to Reform and Farage, who is currently under investigation by the parliamentary standards commissioner over whether he should have declared a £5m cash gift from Harborne ahead of the 2024 election.
Farage has argued that he was under no obligation to register the “purely private” gift, as it was unrelated to his parliamentary or political activities.
The party is also facing scrutiny over its finances after a broadcast by Channel 4 News last week showed two senior Reform aides apparently suggesting a way around electoral law to secure foreign party donations.
The Metropolitan Police has said it is investigating, while the party denies any wrongdoing.
The force is also looking into donations given to the party by Fiona Cottrell, mother of longstanding Farage ally George Cottrell, as well as a company controlled by its deputy leader Richard Tice.
Harborne wrote on Saturday that he had “already accumulated enough wealth for the rest of my life”, while Reform was a “start-up party” that lacked “the benefit of hundreds of years of patronage”.
“A start-up party needs more money than can be provided by membership fees alone, to build and sustain itself and be ready for government,” he said.
Harborne and Delo’s donations mark the largest sums received by a UK political party since they had to begin declaring them in 2001.
Delo, who also announced his donation in a Telegraph op-ed, said he was giving the money away because he wanted a “fair fight and a level playing field”. He said in April he was moving back to Britain from Hong Kong.
Addressing the recent scrutiny of Reform’s finances, he said: “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.”
Last year, he was given an unconditional pardon by US President Donald Trump over a breach of anti-money laundering laws at his crypto trading platform, BitMEX, to which he had pleaded guilty in 2022.
There are currently no restrictions on the amount of money UK-based donors can give to political parties.
However, the Labour government has introduced a £100,000 cap on donations from British citizens living overseas, and plans to introduce a similar one for those who have recently returned to the UK.
There were nine donations of £1m or more to political parties in 2025. The largest was £9m given to Reform UK by Harborne.
Labour had five donations of £1m or more – totalling nearly £10m – and the Conservatives had three of £1m each.
Labour said Reform and Farage still had “serious questions” to answer about their finances.
Party chairwoman Bridget Phillipson said Reform were “drowning” in “sleaze and scandal”,.
She added: “It’s time Farage and Reform came clean with the public, fully co-operated with the ongoing police investigations and prove they’re not just in it for themselves.”
Rachel Millward, deputy leader of the Green Party, told BBC News it wanted a cap on donations from individuals of £500,000.
She said the donations to Reform were “absolutely staggering amounts”, adding: “What I am very frustrated about is the influence of extreme wealth and the super rich. What I want to see is people in politics representing the needs of their communities and ordinary people.”
Liberal Democrat Cabinet Office spokeswoman Lisa Smart called for the government to introduce emergency legislation to cap donations.
She said: “These are eye-watering amounts of money. This is real emergency for our democracy. It presents a very clear and present threat.”
Duncan Hames, Director of Policy and Programmes at campaigning charity Transparency International UK, said: “This is a watershed moment, with two billionaires pledging £72m to one political party in less than 48 hours.
“This situation is now completely out of control, and makes an irrefutable case for government to bring forward an annual cap on political donations, and fast.”
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Bitcoin’s (BTC-USD) relative strength index (RSI) climbed to around 78, signaling overbought conditions as the cryptocurrency extended its volatile rebound from below $64K earlier in the week.
The RSI, a momentum indicator that measures the speed and magnitude of recent price
Published on
The world’s largest cryptocurrency touched an intraday high of $79,500 on Friday, its best level in months, before easing to around $77,700 at the time of writing, leaving it up more than 25% since Monday.
The rally caps one of Bitcoin’s most dramatic weeks in years, following a stretch in which the token had lagged well behind its 2025 highs for much of 2026.
For six straight weeks, Bitcoin had been stuck grinding between $62,000 and $66,000, having fallen over 50% from the all-time high of around $126,000 it reached last year in October, to the low of roughly $57,600 it hit early in July of this year.
That prolonged malaise had encouraged traders to build up bearish positions over the course of the year, betting the token’s underperformance would continue. When the price broke higher this week, those bets unwound violently leading to an episode of forced short covering.
Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, and other digital assets have also surged on the same wave of positioning and momentum was reinforced by signals of extra liquidity from Washington.
The US Treasury doubled the size of its bond buybacks earlier in the week to calm a jittery bond market, and when yields climbed back regardless, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent vowed on Thursday to increase the buybacks even further.
Easier financial conditions and a softer dollar tend to favour riskier assets such as Bitcoin.
Regulatory developments also added further fuel. On Tuesday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission filed a proposal called “Regulation Crypto Assets”, offering crypto issuers lighter registration requirements.
A day later, US President Donald Trump hosted Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong, Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse, Gemini’s Winklevoss twins and other industry leaders at the White House, pushing Congress to pass the long-delayed Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act.
The bill, which would split oversight of digital assets between the SEC and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, cleared the House last year but remains stalled in the Senate, needing 60 votes to clear a procedural hurdle on 15 September that it is not yet assured of overcoming.
Among the most striking moments of Wednesday’s summit came when US President Donald Trump said the Commodity Futures Trading Commission was working to bring Hyperliquid, a decentralised derivatives exchange, onshore “in a fully compliant legal fashion”, though the regulator has yet to publish any timeline for doing so.
The comment sent HYPE, Hyperliquid’s native token, surging 25% within 24 hours.
As it stands, HYPE is trading at around $74, up more than 30% since Trump’s remarks.
The decentralized exchange, popular with perpetual futures traders, has become something of a proxy for how far Washington’s warmer stance on crypto could extend.
The SEC announced on Tuesday that it had filed a proposal titled “Regulation Crypto Assets”, giving crypto entrepreneurs a clearer, considerably lighter route to raising capital under federal securities law, according to the press release published by the regulator.
It is the agency’s first formal rulemaking dedicated to crypto asset offerings, building on broader interpretive guidance the SEC issued in March, and would spare qualifying issuers the costly registration process required of most public offerings.
At the centre of the proposal sit two new exemptions.
The “startup exemption” would let an issuer raise up to $5 million (€4.3mn) over a four year period without registering the offering.
A second, the “fundraising exemption”, would permit raises of up to $75 million (€64.7mn) within any 12 month stretch, though issuers relying on it would still need to publish financial statements and meet ongoing reporting duties.
Both routes ask companies to give investors narrative, principles based disclosures, rather than the dense legal filings typically demanded of public listings.
The proposal also sets out a conditional safe harbour that could eventually place certain tokens outside the legal definition of a security, once an issuer has finished, or permanently abandoned, the managerial efforts it promised investors.
It would also override conflicting state registration rules for offerings made under the exemptions, sparing issuers from having to comply separately with individual state securities regimes.
SEC Chairman Paul Atkins described the package as a “minimum effective dose” of oversight, protecting investors while leaving builders maximum room to innovate.
The reception of the proposal has been largely warm.
Summer Mersinger, CEO of the Blockchain Association, said the move finally delivers the tailored regulatory clarity the sector has sought for years. Cody Carbone, CEO of the Digital Chamber, likewise praised the plan, pledging support in helping the industry expand within the US rather than abroad.
However, the proposal is far from final. It stays open for public comment for 60 days once published in the Federal Register, meaning its provisions could still change, or be scrapped, before any final rule is adopted.
The SEC’s move comes roughly a week and a half after the US Senate left Washington for its summer recess without advancing the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act (H.R. 3633), the industry’s flagship bill, which would split oversight of digital assets between the SEC and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
US Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed a cloture motion on the bill on 7 August, but lawmakers departed before a vote was held. That motion is now due to come up again on 15 September, a procedural hurdle rather than a final vote, once senators return.
SEC Chairman Paul Atkins has argued on more than one occasion that only Congress can deliver a lasting, “future-proofed” framework able to survive changes in political leadership, and the Commission says it still backs the bill’s passage.
Even so, with its timetable slipping into autumn, the regulator appears to have decided not to wait, instead using powers it already holds to offer the industry some certainty while lawmakers prepare to resume the debate next month.
WASHINGTON — Federal regulators have given preliminary approval for a cryptocurrency venture tied to President Trump and his family to operate a digital-asset bank, a decision that has drawn immediate condemnation from Senate Democrats who are now pushing legislation to bar such an action.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, and nine other Senate Democrats introduced a bill Saturday that would bar the president, the vice president, their immediate family members and other senior government officials from owning or controlling banks.
The measure was proposed a day after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — which is part of the Trump administration — granted conditional approval for World Liberty Trust Co. to become a trust bank. The firm was founded in 2024 by two of Trump’s sons and the sons of Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration’s special envoy to the Middle East.
If the firm gets final approval, it would not act like a conventional bank and take deposits or make loans. Instead, the chartered bank would be able to issue and manage cryptocurrencies and digital assets. But the move would grant new financial powers to the Trump family’s crypto business, which has already shown to be profitable for the president in his first year back in the White House.
Trump’s financial disclosures show the president has earned more than $1.2 billion from crypto-related projects as he has pushed to deregulate the digital-asset industry. He hauled in more than $500 million from his World Liberty Financial business selling new crypto products and is a significant owner of the firm through an entity called DT Marks DEFI LLC, which holds about a 38% stake.
Aside from World Liberty Financial, Trump last year took in more than $600 million from sales of souvenir-type “meme” coins stamped with his likeness.
Trump’s crypto windfall has lately fueled Democrats’ argument that the president stands to personally gain from the same regulatory apparatus he oversees, and has led to acrimonious negotiations in Capitol Hill over how to regulate the industry.
The White House said Tuesday “there are no conflicts of interest.” But the recent decision by federal regulators in relation to World Liberty Financial is now giving more ammunition to Democrats, who have pushed for more ethical guardrails to crack down on the Trump family’s crypto ventures.
“This is the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen — and Congress cannot allow it to stand,” Warren said in a statement. “The Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act will close the door on this kind of unprecedented corruption.”
Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) said the decision to allow a Trump-linked crypto firm to charter its own bank is “injecting risk into our financial system and fueling the Trump family’s business endeavors.”
“It is Congress’ responsibility and duty now to rein in this corruption and ensure that bank charters, deposit insurance, and other banking licenses cannot be handed out to entities influenced or controlled by any President’s family,” Alsobrooks said in a statement.
David Wachsman, a spokesperson for World Liberty Financial, disputed the criticism, saying the preliminary approval is “great news for consumer and investor protection advocates and for the American financial services industry.”
“Critics are missing the point: World Liberty Financial is running towards regulation and continuous oversight, not away from it,” Wachsman said in a statement. “World Liberty Trust Company’s national charter will ensure robust and permanent regulatory supervision from the OCC, a federal banking regulator, that will outlast the Trump administration.”
Wachsman said World Liberty will be required to provide weekly reports about its operations that will be subject to independent reviews. He added that federal banking laws such as anti-money-laundering rules and consumer protection statutes will be “directly applicable and enforceable.”
The White House did not comment directly about the administration’s involvement with the World Liberty application to charter a bank. But in a statement, the White House disputed claims that the president’s decisions in office have financially benefited him and his allies.
“All of President Trump’s investment holdings are in held in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement. “The President only acts in the best interests of the American public — which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media.”
Kelly added: “There are no conflicts of interest.”