Nigel Farage has acquired a significant stake in a bitcoin reserve business helmed by Liz Truss’s former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.
The Reform UK leader has invested £215,000 in Stack BTC, participating in an equity fundraising that also involved Blockchain.com. Mr Farage secured 4.3 million shares through his investment vehicle Thorn In The Side Ltd at a price of 5p per share, giving him 6.3 per cent ownership. The company confirmed that the total investment from this fundraising was £260,000.
Mr Farage said of the investment: “I have long been one of the UK’s few political advocates for bitcoin, recognising the role digital currencies will play in the future of business and finance.
“London and the UK has historically been the centre of the world’s financial markets, and I believe that we can and should be a major global hub for the crypto industry.”
Labour questioned why Mr Farage was investing his money with the “architect of Liz Truss’s disastrous mini Budget”.
A Labour Party spokesperson said: “Nigel Farage hailed Liz Truss’s disastrous economy-crashing mini-Budget as the ‘best Conservative budget since 1986’. Now the Reform leader is pouring hundreds of thousands of pounds into the business of the architect of that chaos. What a total slap in the face for families still footing massive mortgages. Farage proves time and time again that he simply isn’t on the side of working people.”
Questions have been raised over Mr Farage and Reform’s relationship with cryptocurrency after two donations worth £12m were made to the party by the Thailand-based crypto entrepreneur Christopher Harborne.
The government has asked the Electoral Commission to investigate crypto donations that Mr Farage claimed Reform received last year and that have not been registered.
Stack is not the first crypto investment made by Mr Farage, having previously invested in Tether.
Stack, a London-based firm listed on the UK challenger stock exchange Aquis, operates by building a portfolio of companies and channelling their surplus cash into bitcoin. Its core objective is to establish a substantial bitcoin treasury through continuous accumulation of the digital currency.
The venture is chaired by Mr Kwarteng, most widely recognised for his brief 38-day tenure as chancellor in 2022, during which he co-authored the controversial mini-budget with Ms Truss.
The pound fell to a 37-year low after Mr Kwarteng announced the biggest tranche of tax cuts for half a century, to be funded by more than £70 billion of increased borrowing. He also served as Conservative MP for Spelthorne, Surrey, until 2024.
Mr Kwarteng, who controls a 5.4 per cent stake in Stack together with his wife, Harriet, said: “We are absolutely delighted to have Nigel Farage and Blockchain.com become strategic investors in Stack. Nigel’s unwavering support for British business and belief that Bitcoin is set to rapidly expand its role in finance is perfectly aligned with the company’s ethos and business plans.”
Reform UK last year pledged to slash red tape and cut taxes on cryptocurrencies and set up a bitcoin reserve fund if elected, which would allow people to pay tax in the cryptocurrency.
The Treasury recently announced legislation to regulate cryptocurrencies like bitcoin in a similar way to that of other finance products. This follows efforts to overhaul the market, which has grown in popularity in recent years as an alternative investment product and a way of making payments.
The UK’s financial regulator has nonetheless warned that it is a “high risk” investment and that people could “lose all their money” from the asset.
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