A little-known crypto firm bought more gold last year than any other entity on earth – and its biggest shareholder is also the man who gave Nigel Farage's Reform party the largest donation in British political history.
Tether, the El Salvador-based company behind the world's biggest stablecoin USDT, snapped up more of the precious metal than anyone else in 2025, according to European Central Bank data. It stores that gold in a Swiss former nuclear bunker, straight out of a James Bond film, Tether's boss says.
“Tether, the world's biggest stablecoin, bought more gold than anyone last year, and its shareholder gave £9m to Reform UK.”
But Tether is not just a buyer of gold. It also holds $135bn (£101bn) of US government debt – more than South Korea. With just 200 employees, the company has begun to resemble a private central bank.
One of its significant shareholders is Christopher Harborne, a name that has become familiar in Westminster. Last August, Harborne gave £9m in cash to Reform UK – the biggest party donation in British history. He followed up with £3m in October and another £3m in January, all properly declared.
Before those donations, Harborne had given £5m directly to Farage himself – a personal gift that was not disclosed and became the subject of parliamentary investigations. Farage subsequently resigned as an MP. Both men have said there were no strings attached to either the personal gift or the political donations.
Yet the connections do not end with money. The Bank of England's governor, Andrew Bailey, recently confirmed that Farage raised the issue of cryptocurrency regulation – and specifically central bank digital currencies – with him in September last year. Farage made his views "very clear", Bailey said, though the governor insisted the "intervention" did not change the Bank's policy. He added that he could spot "lobbying" and knew how to discount it.
At the time, there was speculation that the Bank of England would push ahead with a limit on holdings of potential sterling stablecoins of between £10,000 and £20,000. The industry was lobbying hard against it.
Farage did not mention Tether by name in his conversation with Bailey, according to my understanding. But he did talk about stablecoin regulation in general. That raises reasonable questions about the precise details of that conversation – and the scope for any possible benefit to Tether and its shareholders from shifts in Bank of England policy.
Farage has already spoken openly about embracing cryptocurrencies. "Tether is about to be valued as a $500bn company," he told LBC presenter Nick Ferrari.
The Reform leader's championing of the crypto industry, combined with the extraordinary scale of Harborne's donations and his stake in a firm that now dwarfs some nation states, leaves a trail of questions that Westminster has yet to fully answer.