Pardoned BitMEX Founder Decides UK Politics Needs Less 'Compliance' Than Crypto Did

Ben Delo, BitMEX co-founder and recipient of what might be the most exclusive crypto-to-politics pivot in history, has donated £4 million ($5.3 million) to Nigel Farage's Reform UK party. Delo announced the contribution in a Telegraph op-ed published April 8, calling it his first foray into political activism. Apparently, after dodging AML compliance at scale, he figured British democracy could use some of that deregulated energy.

Delo co-founded the cryptocurrency derivatives exchange BitMEX in 2014. In 2022, he pleaded guilty to violating the US Bank Secrecy Act for failing to maintain anti-money laundering controls at the platform. He paid a $10 million civil fine and received 30 months of probation. One might say he learned the hard way that "move fast and break things" works better as a tweet than as financial regulation.

President Donald Trump granted full pardons to Delo and his co-founders, Arthur Hayes and Samuel Reed, in March 2025. Because if there's one thing the Trump administration loves more than Bitcoin, it's former crypto executives who need presidential get-out-of-jail-free cards.

In his op-ed, Delo framed his donation as addressing what he called a crisis of honesty in British public life. He wrote that Reform UK was the only party willing to confront the country's problems directly. One assumes this was ironic coming from someone who once ran a platform where leverage went up to 100x.

"Since the start of this year, I have donated £4m to help Nigel Farage to build Reform UK into a genuine alternative party of government," The Telegraph reported. For context, that's roughly the cost of one regulatory fine these days—or about 63 Bitcoin at current prices.

The UK government introduced a £100,000 annual cap on political donations from British citizens living abroad on March 25. A moratorium on cryptocurrency donations also took effect alongside the cap. These measures followed an independent review into foreign financial interference in British politics led by former Permanent Secretary Philip Rycroft. Somewhere, a DEA agent is annoyed they didn't get to freeze these funds first.

Delo, currently based in Hong Kong, said he will relocate to Britain to sidestep the cap and continue funding Reform's campaign efforts. Because apparently, the solution to political donation restrictions is just to move back home. Novel concept.

Reform UK has received £12 million from Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based British investor, over the past year. The new cap could limit Harborne's future contributions significantly. Guess the degen money printer is finally hitting its ceiling.