# Ben Delo British crypto billionaire, co-founder of the derivatives exchange [[BitMEX]], convicted federal money-laundering-controls offender, recipient of a [[Donald Trump]] pardon — and, since September 11, 2026, **the largest single donor to a British political party on record**. Delo matters to the KB as the second leg of a structure that used to have one: where [[Christopher Harborne]] was for years the sole billionaire propping up [[Reform UK]], Delo's arrival converted a one-donor dependency into a **two-crypto-fortune dependency**. He also funds the intellectual and physical infrastructure of the British new right — the Cambridge student society and the Westminster venue where its personnel and policy get made — which makes him something Harborne is not: a movement-builder as well as a chequebook. ## Background - **Full name:** Ben Peter Delo - **Born:** February 24, 1984, Sheffield, England - **Education:** Worcester College, Oxford — double first-class honours in mathematics and computer science (2005) - **Early career:** Software engineer at IBM (with computing patents), then high-frequency trading systems at GSA Capital and JP Morgan, specialising in kdb+/Q - **2012:** Relocated to Hong Kong with JP Morgan; began investing in Bitcoin - **2018:** Identified by *The Times* as the UK's youngest self-made billionaire ## BitMEX Delo co-founded [[BitMEX]] in 2014 with Arthur Hayes and Sam Reed. Bloomberg described him in 2022 as "the BitMEX co-founder most responsible for the perpetual swap's invention" — the derivative instrument that became the dominant vehicle for leveraged crypto speculation worldwide. ## The Conviction and the Pardon This is the part of the record that matters for a political-donations page, because it is the part that a UK regulator would have had to weigh and a US president chose to erase. - **October 1, 2020** — The Department of Justice and the CFTC charged the BitMEX founders with violating the **Bank Secrecy Act** by failing to implement an adequate anti-money-laundering programme. The allegation was not incidental: BitMEX had operated as a conduit for funds while running deliberately thin know-your-customer controls. - **March 2021** — Delo surrendered to US authorities. - **February 24, 2022** — Pleaded **guilty**. - **Sentence** — 30 months' probation (running through December 2024) and a **$10 million civil penalty**. - **March 2025** — **Pardoned by [[Donald Trump]]**, along with his BitMEX co-founders. The pardon sits inside a pattern the KB documents elsewhere: the second Trump administration's systematic clemency for crypto-industry figures convicted of financial-controls offences, granted while the same industry was becoming a dominant source of political money on both sides of the Atlantic. A man barred by conviction from parts of the financial system was restored to good standing, and within eighteen months wrote the largest political cheque in British history. ## Political Donations | Date | Recipient | Amount | Context | |------|-----------|--------|---------| | **April 2026** | **Reform UK** | **£4M** | First disclosed donation | | **Earlier 2026** | **Reform UK** | **£8M total** | Cumulative, including the April £4M | | **Sept 11, 2026** | **Reform UK** | **£36M** | Largest single donation to a UK party on record | | **Total (2026)** | | **£44M** | Surpassed Lord John Sainsbury's £10M to the Conservatives (2022) | Delo's £36 million broke the British record by a factor of more than three. It held that distinction for roughly twenty-four hours: on September 12, [[Christopher Harborne]] matched it exactly with £36 million of his own. The pair's **£72 million (~$97.4 million)** over two days exceeded the **£69 million** received by *all* UK political parties combined in the preceding year. Neither donor disclosed what form his payment took. Harborne's previous Reform donations were made in fiat rather than cryptocurrency. ## The Infrastructure He Funds Delo's money does not only go to the party. It goes to the pipeline that staffs it: - **The Cambridge Scrutonian Society** — founded by students of [[James Orr]], the Cambridge theologian who runs Reform UK's policy operation and was tasked with building "networks of elite defectors from academia, business, and law." - **"The Sanctuary"** — a Westminster venue near Westminster Abbey, which also hosts Rupert Lowe's Restore Britain. - Delo entered this network at a **December 2023 [[Peter Thiel]] lecture at Oxford**, co-organised by Orr. This is the same architecture the KB maps in the United States: not merely funding candidates, but funding the seminar rooms, societies and venues that produce the people who become candidates and staff. The [[Edmund Burke Foundation]] / [[National Conservatism]] network is the transatlantic frame; Orr is the hinge; Thiel is the American end of it. ## Philanthropy Delo signed the **Giving Pledge** in April 2019, committing at least half his wealth to charity. Documented giving includes £5 million to Worcester College (2018), COVID-19 research support, co-founding the Sheila Coates Foundation for autistic students, the Ben Delo Commonwealth Leadership Programme at King's College London, and £25 million to his autism charity (2026). The philanthropy is real and should be recorded as such. It also sits alongside £44 million to a single political party in one year — a ratio worth noting when the giving is described publicly as charitable rather than political. ## Why This Matters The UK's political-donation regime assumes a world in which very large gifts are rare, domestically sourced, and slow. Delo's £36 million tested all three assumptions at once. A Labour amendment from MP Stella Creasy to cap donations at £100,000 a year was never debated in the Commons after the government said it would set up a task force instead. Transparency International UK's director Duncan Hames called the September donations "a watershed moment" requiring "an annual cap on political donations, and fast." ## See Also - [[Christopher Harborne]] — The other crypto billionaire funding Reform; matched Delo's record within a day - [[Reform UK]] — The recipient, now dependent on two crypto fortunes - [[BitMEX]] — The exchange, the conviction, and the pardon - [[James Orr]] — Reform's policy chief and the hinge between Delo's money and the Cambridge pipeline - [[Peter Thiel]] — The 2023 Oxford lecture where Delo entered this network - [[Crypto-Political Machine]] — The US-side structure this is the British counterpart to - [[Nigel Farage]] — The party leader whose political vehicle the money sustains