‘It’s like this was made up by a schoolkid’: Reform’s vanishing crypto bill

Reform UK has quietly removed its flagship draft crypto bill – announced just over a year ago at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas – from the party website. The move, which happened at the end of May, came after it was reported that its leader, Nigel Farage, was being investigated by the parliamentary commissioner for standards over whether he should have declared a £5m gift from cryptobillionaire Christopher Harborne, made in early 2024. 

In addition to Reform’s cryptoassets and digital finance bill, which promised to make the UK a “crypto powerhouse”, Farage has been pressing the Bank of England on other issues that matter to Harborne. This month, the Guardian revealed that Farage had lobbied the Bank of England to drop plans for a state-backed digital pound, or “Britcoin” – a move that would suit his patron. Then, last week, the Bank abandoned its plan to cap individual stablecoin holdings at £20,000 – a limit Farage had publicly attacked, calling the Bank “dinosaurs”.

The Labour MP Phil Brickell, chair of the all-parliamentary group on anti-corruption and responsible tax, expressed concern about this chain of events: “Crypto billionaires have donated millions of pounds to Nigel Farage’s Reform. One ‘gifted’ him £5m personally. Then Farage appears to swallow their lines and lobby for crypto-friendly policy reforms that will financially benefit his donors. This behaviour shows an absolute brazen disregard for probity in public life.”

The Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson Daisy Cooper MP is also wary of Farage’s lobbying: “Everything Farage does or says about crypto seems to be aimed at enriching his donors and potentially even himself, all while putting people’s money at risk.”

The Nerve asked Harborne’s lawyers whether his financial support of Reform and Farage was connected to the party’s positions on crypto policy, but they didn’t respond. In reply to the Guardian lobbying story earlier this month, they said: “Mr Harborne will not comment on fantasy.”

Reform’s cryptoassets and digital finance bill was launched with fanfare on 29 May last year. In a City AM column published that day, party chair Zia Yusuf called it the first step in “a transformative agenda"; that evening, on stage at a Las Vegas crypto conference, Farage brandished a copy and told the applauding crowd: "We will campaign for this and we will put it in place at the next general election." The document has since vanished from their website, leaving only four other policy papers: two about immigration, one about Scotland and another about Wales. 

The bill can still be dug out online – the original PDF is still hosted by Reform’s software contractor – but it no longer appears anywhere on the party's site.

“I think Reform have realised they’ve been caught out and are now backtracking,” says Brickell. “But this issue will not go away until Farage discloses the contents of correspondence and meetings he has had with his cryptobillionaire donors. Show us the money, Nigel.”

During the writing of this piece, the Nerve contacted Reform UK twice to ask, among other things, why the bill was removed from their website, if they still supported its proposals and whether Farage accepted that his positions on stablecoin regulation align with the commercial interests of the stablecoin industry. They didn’t respond. When questioned by the BBC about Harborne’s £9m donation to Reform in August last year, Farage said he spoke to the billionaire “maybe once a month, maybe once every six weeks", but insisted: "I've not promised him a single thing in return for his donation."

The Nerve shared a copy of the policy document with three finance experts and asked them to explain the significance of the proposals – and who would benefit from their implementation.

Financial economist and former banker Frances Coppola said the bill contained “measures which, from an economic standpoint – even from a welfare standpoint – really make little sense".

Dr Philipp Paech, associate professor of law at the London School of Economics and former chair of the European Commission expert group on fintech, said: “It is a nonsensical proposal in terms of public policy and would directly benefit a specific clientele." 

Carol Alexander, professor of finance at Sussex University, was unimpressed: "It's like this was made up by a schoolkid," she said.

Reform pitched their crypto policies as something that would appeal and benefit to young people – the bill quotes Financial Conduct Authority research that a quarter of Britons aged 18-34 hold crypto. 

Young investors are unlikely to benefit from much of this. The headline measure cuts capital gains tax on crypto from 18% (basic rate) and 24% (higher rate) to a flat 10% on gains above £3,000. But FCA research found only 5% of crypto holders have more than £10,000 invested, so few stand to gain – and the cut applies to everyone, including the wealthiest holders. The biggest winners are those who got in early: £1,000 of bitcoin bought a decade ago would be worth around £101,000 today, and a higher-rate holder cashing out would save roughly £13,500 under the new rate. "If you really wanted to help young people, you'd say the capital gains rate for 18-to-34-year-olds is 10%," says Paech. "Instead it applies to everyone, including the super-rich."

Reform would also make it illegal for a bank to refuse or withdraw services from a customer solely because they lawfully deal in cryptoassets. The bill flips the burden of proof, so it would fall to the bank to show that a refusal was not simply about crypto. That inverts the current position, in which banks routinely "de-risk," closing accounts they judge high-risk, as part of their anti-money-laundering obligations.

The proposal is seemingly modelled on Farage's own experience. When Coutts moved to close his accounts in 2023, the bank cited commercial reasons, but an internal dossier Farage obtained showed its reputational risk committee had judged him incompatible with the bank's "values" – calling him a “disingenuous grifter”. An independent review later found the closure predominantly commercial, and lawful.

Individuals in Farage's position would gain from the change, and so would crypto exchanges, whose customers can currently find transfers to and from trading platforms blocked or queried by their banks. But the measure does nothing about the harm experienced by most retail crypto investors. "There's nothing in these proposals that protects people from fraud and scams," says Alexander.

The bill would allow individuals and companies to pay their HMRC tax bills in cryptocurrency. This would require the state to build a crypto handling platform to instantly convert payments into sterling – otherwise the state is exposed to a very volatile asset. 

Paech recalled how, five years ago, Elon Musk invited people to pay for a Tesla with bitcoin. The scheme was abandoned after six weeks. "Paying tax in bitcoin is just as idiotic,” said Paech. 

The document also says that a Reform government will require the Bank of England to hold bitcoin as part of its strategic reserve – which currently consists of gold, high-quality foreign currency and treasuries.

Alexander is dismissive: "Bitcoin is not a store of value … why would the Bank of England want to hold a super-volatile asset like that?" She doubts the reserve would shift the price much, if at all – given the huge trading volumes in bitcoin markets, she says, the Bank's buying would be a drop in the ocean. The biggest effect, she believes, would be to confer legitimacy: "If an institution like the Bank treats it as a reserve asset, that's a signal, and it's the signal which supports demand. But ordinary investors don’t gain much. The people who win are the largest holders – and the more you hold, the more you move the market."

As Paech points out: "The only other country that does this kind of stunt is El Salvador. Is that who we want to compare ourselves to?" In 2024, El Salvador had to row back from its crypto-friendly policies as a condition of receiving a loan from the IMF. 

Paech said that, once embedded in personal finances, the volatility of crypto should concern us all. "The more people hold bitcoin, the more economically exposed – the more hazardous – household finances become."

Reform's bill barely engages with stablecoins – they appear once, in a list of definitions. 

A stablecoin is a digital asset pegged to a national currency such as the dollar. Harborne holds an estimated 12% stake in Tether, the company behind USDT, the world's largest stablecoin. Tether makes its money by investing the cash people hand over for its tokens and keeping the interest. The stake is lucrative: the Guardian has estimated that a 12% share of Tether's profits would be worth around £1bn a year to him. According to the Sunday Times 2026 Rich List, Harborne’s wealth stands at £18.2bn. His fortune is mainly dependent on the success of stablecoins.

However, even though the bill barely mentions them, four months after its launch, Farage wrote a column with Zia Yusuf in the Telegraph, attacking the £20,000 cap on individual holdings of sterling stablecoins – the limit the Bank has now dropped. Removing the cap suits stablecoin issuers. 

As the Guardian reported, Farage met Bailey privately last September to press him to drop plans for a state-issued Britcoin, and later told a crypto conference he was “prepared to go to prison” to stop it.

The industry's fear is that a Britcoin guaranteed by the Bank of England would erode demand for private stablecoins. That case was put to the Bank in 2021 by the Digital Currencies Governance Group (DCGG), a body representing Tether, which warned of a "significant risk" that users would switch away. EU transparency records list Harborne as a registered DCGG lobbyist in 2020-21. His lawyers have said there is no evidence his work for the group was carried out for, or on behalf of, Tether.

Farage frames his opposition as resistance to state surveillance – but the Bank has not said a digital pound would require digital ID. Coppola is unconvinced the surveillance objection is the real one. A digital pound, she argues, would threaten little beyond the crypto industry itself – stablecoin issuers and their users – "not the real economy". 

Many of the firms that would benefit from a Reform-enabled crypto boom have London offices: exchanges Coinbase, blockchain.com and Kraken; and infrastructure companies Jump and Ripple. Coinbase and Ripple were among the biggest backers of Fairshake, the pro-crypto Super Pac that spent heavily in the 2024 US elections, and the industry has since won favourable federal legislation and a string of executive orders under Trump. Fairshake has a $125m war chest for the midterm campaigns. Trump’s interest isn’t purely legislative: in January 2025, Forbes estimated that the President’s crypto ventures had increased his wealth by $1bn. 

Bloomberg has previously reported that in July last year representatives of Coinbase, Kraken and Ripple met Reform UK leaders at the offices of lobbying group NorthPoint Strategy in an attempt to “woo” Farage. 

In March this year, Farage invested £275,650 in the bitcoin business Stack BTC, chaired by former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng – Blockchain.com also made a “strategic” investment. The Times estimated that if certain conditions were met, Farage’s investment could be worth £9m in January 2028. 

“Nigel Farage’s dream is to turn the UK into Trump’s America, so it’s no surprise that he seems to be copying the Donald Trump playbook of cashing in on crypto,” says the Lib Dems’ Cooper. 

Stack BTC’s press release was open about the synergy: “Stack's business strategy aligns with Nigel Farage's position as a champion of British business and longtime advocate of bitcoin's role in the future of finance.”

Brickell said that, while it was permissible for politicians to have outside interests, it was “highly inappropriate for an elected politician to hold such a significant investment and at the same time push a friendly policy agenda in Westminster, which could see Farage personally benefit to the tune of millions of pounds”.

That is a conflict of interest, Cooper believes. She said: “Three months ago, I wrote to the Financial Conduct Authority asking them to investigate Nigel Farage for using his political platform for what appears to be a plan to inflate crypto prices, interfere in the market, and make millions for himself and his donors. I sincerely hope the FCA is taking this issue seriously and investigating.”

The Nerve contacted the FCA to ask if they had made a decision on whether to investigate Farage, but they did not respond. Farage did not respond to the Nerve’s question about whether his Stack BTC holding represented a conflict. 

In Las Vegas, Farage waved his party’s bill above his head and promised a roomful of crypto investors he would make it law. A year on, the document has quietly come off Reform's website, the party won't say why, and Farage will not address whether holding a stake in a bitcoin company is appropriate for the leader of a party that is urging the Bank of England to buy bitcoin. 

Farage has many explanations for the £5m gift. But for the bill, the lobbying and the bitcoin stake, he has none.