Nigel Farage, the man who helped deliver Brexit, the greatest act of economic self-harm in living memory, has joined forces with Kwasi Kwarteng, the former Tory chancellor responsible for the disastrous mini-budget of 2022, to offer us, of all things – financial advice. It’s a proposition so absurd that it makes trusting tobacco company Philip Morris to link smoking to cancer seem rational by comparison. Talking of toxic Americans, it is, of course, from Donald Trump’s venal presidency that Farage has lifted his latest moneymaking scheme: plugging cryptocurrency investments.
Nigel Farage and Kwasi Kwarteng, chairman of cryptocurrency business Stack.
Our dynamic duo, Farage and Kwarteng, have appeared in a promotional video for the cryptocurrency business Stack BTC. The company says it has a “dual growth model”. Ninety per cent of the business is simply buying bitcoin. Ten per cent of activity will be buying businesses whose surplus profits are reinvested in the digital currency. In other words, it sets out to swallow up as much bitcoin as it can. As Ben Quinn in the Guardian puts it, “when the price of bitcoin rises, [Stack BTC’s] share price would generally be expected to follow suit; when the price falls, so would the share price”.
Given his appetite for second, third and fourth jobs, it’s of little surprise that, shortly before the promo video dropped, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage bought £215,000 worth of shares in Stack BTC. Kwarteng, who stepped down as an MP at the last general election, became the company’s executive chair in October 2025. He and his wife together own 5.4% of the company. Farage’s stake now stands at 6.3%. That means Nigel Farage, as a major investor in Stack BTC, has a financial interest in the value of bitcoin rising.
This inevitably raises serious ethical questions including: should Nigel Farage, an elected MP, be allowed to promote financial investments to the public while profiting from an increase in its share price? The answer is clearly: no.
The potential conflict of interest between the MP for Clacton’s business interest and his duty towards his constituents is significant. Regulators and major financial institutions like the Bank of England view bitcoin as a high-risk, speculative activity rather than a conventional investment. The cryptocurrency market is subject to huge price volatility in short periods, compared with traditional stocks and bonds. Most crypto activities remain largely unregulated in the UK, with no Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) protection if firms fail or funds are lost to hacks, scams or fraud. Meanwhile, legislation and regulation has fallen behind the scale and pace of these rapidly evolving digital financial products.
In May last year, Farage was introduced as “the UK’s most influential bitcoin politician” at Las Vegas’s flashy Bitcoin Conference 2025. There, he made two surprise announcements: first, that Reform UK had drafted a “crypto assets and digital finance bill”, which he claimed he would enact should he become prime minister. The bill would, according to the party website, “establish a national strategic holding of bitcoin at the Bank of England” called the Bitcoin Reserve Fund. A byproduct of the BRF – intentional or otherwise – would be to increase the value of bitcoin globally through sustained buying pressure and the gift of legitimacy. Reform claims the legislation would be another “Brexit benefit”. Second – to whoops and cheers from an American audience – the MP for Clacton told the crowd that Reform had just become the first British political party to accept donations via cryptocurrency.
A few months later, the BBC reported that Reform had received a record £9m from British cryptocurrency and aviation billionaire Christopher Harborne, who lives in Thailand. Harborne had previously made donations, though not as generously, to Reform’s previous iteration, the Brexit party. In April this year, another British crypto billionaire, Ben Delo, who is based in Hong Kong, gave Reform £4m, sliding in just before the government introduced a £100,000 cap on political donations from British citizens living overseas. Alongside the cap came a moratorium on donations made in cryptocurrency to UK political parties until, says the government, “parliament and the Electoral Commission are satisfied that the regulatory environment is robust enough”.
No functioning democracy should stand for its politicians pushing crypto-friendly laws while accepting donations from those who might benefit
To be clear, there is no proof of wrongdoing by Nigel Farage, Kwasi Kwarteng, Stack BTC or the crypto billionaires who’ve donated to Reform UK. However, no functioning democracy should stand for its politicians pushing crypto-friendly laws while accepting party donations from businessmen who might benefit. Nor should any politician lend their “brand” to crypto investment companies while potentially financially benefiting from the publicity that it provides. It’s worth noting that when it was first announced that Farage had invested in Stack BTC, the company’s share price surged by over 60%. It has now fallen back, but remains higher than before his arrival.
Of course, as I mentioned at the start, nothing we’re seeing here is new. The promotion of cryptocurrency, digital assets and “non-traditional banking” platforms by politicians began – like so many tech-based-rightwing-o-sphere ideas – in the US. Among a slew of corruption claims levelled at Donald Trump are some involving the presidential family’s foray into all things crypto.
In July 2025, Trump signed into law the so-called Genius Act. Critics said it contained loopholes in regulation that put consumers at very serious financial risk; the president said the act would future-proof the US economy by turning it into the cryptocurrency capital of the world. Sound familiar?
The problem is, the Genius Act represents a huge potential conflict of interest because, just before winning the 2024 presidential election, Trump and his sons, along with prominent real estate mogul Steve Witkoff (who later became Trump’s special envoy) and his sons founded the so-called “digital asset bank” World Liberty Financial. It’s a crypto-focused financial platform that, according to Reuters, has already made the Trump family $1bn. WLF has also launched its own stablecoin called USD1, fully backed by US Treasury bills.
Trump’s creation fits perfectly into the libertarian technocratic ideology pushed by – among others – Palantir boss (and close friend of JD Vance) Peter Thiel. In his worldview, cryptocurrency is a means by which individuals can remain “sovereign” over their financial affairs by avoiding regulatory oversight and “unfair” taxes demanded by pesky elected governments. To the rest of us, this might sound like a recipe for a financial crash cooked up by a bunch of professional tax evaders. Either way, keep an ear out for this sort of language as it makes its way across the pond.
While Farage’s investment in Stack BTC may differ in scale and operation to Trump’s venture, the outcome of his actions, if left unchecked, will be the same: the slow death of democracy by way of unchecked conflicts of interest, the distortion of policy for personal gain and the collapse of public trust.
Sangita Myska is an award-winning journalist and presenter best known for her political and social commentary.