When the bitcoin cryptocurrency surged to new heights about a decade ago, the Hong Kong-based crypto entrepreneur and Reform UK donor Ben Delo was catapulted into the ranks of the global super-rich.
British-born Delo and his fellow co-founders at BitMEX – one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges – were making millions of pounds a day trading in the cryptocurrency and appeared to relish the excesses of the financial elite.
The company’s offices on the 45th floor of a Hong Kong tower block were reported to have an eight-metre-long fish tank containing three blacktip reef sharks as a centrepiece. And when Delo and colleagues attended a 2018 crypto conference in New York, they hired three Lamborghinis to park outside.
These days, Delo, 42, says that he has little interest in ostentatious wealth. One of his key pursuits now is giving away most of his fortune in his lifetime, with Nigel Farage’s political party a key beneficiary of his largesse.
“I’m not interested in art auctions or superyachts,” he wrote in an article for the Spectator last year. “I’m interested in backing ideas that scale – and truth should scale better than anything else.”
Delo confirmed in April that he had donated £4m this year to Reform to help Farage build “a genuine alternative party of government”. These donations have not yet appeared in Electoral Commission records, which are published quarterly. Labour has now proposed new laws that would implement a £100,000 cap on political donations from Britons living overseas.
The government wrote to political parties earlier this year, warning that the new measures to prevent “foreign financial interference” would apply retrospectively. Once the new measures are in place, parties would need to return any donations received on or after 25 March that breach the regulations.
While some of Britain’s super-rich have moved overseas after a series of tax changes introduced by Labour, Delo has said he is now heading back to the UK so he can continue to support Reform. He has criticised the new proposals on donations as “tinpot” and part of a Labour effort “to stack the political deck against the most popular opposition party”.
The billionaire and crypto investor Christoper Harborne last year gave £12m to Reform, including the biggest single donation to a political party of £9m. It was revealed by the Guardian last month that he had also given Farage an undeclared personal gift of £5m. Harborne, 63, may challenge the new cap on overseas donations in court or even return to Britain.
Delo has given more than £100m to various causes, ranging from a £25m donation to the Sheila Coates Foundation, a charity he founded to support children with autism, and a £20m pledge to the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences, to £5m for Worcester College, Oxford. He and his wife, Pan Pan Wong, are also listed as supporters of Woking Amateur Operatic Society.
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Delo was born in Sheffield and was expelled from three primary schools before being diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. He went on to graduate from Oxford University with a double first in mathematics and computer science.
He worked initially as a computer programmer, and later developed high-frequency trading systems for hedge funds and banks, including JP Morgan. From 2014 to 2019, he helped to build BitMax, which at its peak handled more than $1tn dollars in trading volume annually. By 2018, Delo was Britain’s first bitcoin dollar billionaire.
In February and March 2022, Delo and his two co-founders of BitMEX pleaded guilty for violating the US Bank Secrecy Act by failing to maintain adequate anti-money-laundering measures. Each agreed to pay a civil monetary penalty of $10m, and all three were subsequently pardoned in March 2025 by Donald Trump, with Delo commenting at the time that the company had been “wrongfully targeted” by an “obscure, antiquated law”.
An investigation by the Guardian and anti-racist group Hope Not Hate in March revealed how Delo was funding a suite of offices in Westminster used to host various groups, including rightwing activists. Delo’s lawyers told the newspaper he provided space for people to express a diverse range of views, but it did not mean he endorsed them. He has said his donations support freedom of expression and open debate.
The offices were said to have the trappings of a gentlemen’s club, with a turret room, a tapestry room and a common room. There was also a framed copy of Delo’s presidential pardon on one of the walls. Delo has been contacted for comment.
Photograph by Anne Schwarz