Reform sidelines crypto industry at pivotal conference

Reform UK is set to sideline crypto companies at its conference next week and cut the industry’s access to senior figures after backlash over Nigel Farage’s £5m gift from a bitcoin billionaire, Morning Wire can reveal.

Reform was an early champion of the digital currency and tokenisation industries, which have been a mainstay at previous conferences and events.

But an agenda for Reform’s annual conference next week reveals the industry is not represented in the roster of corporate partners or its dozens of satellite events, as the party looks to court more conventional corporate players.

Farage’s poll-topping party has also axed a string of perks offered to crypto executives at previous conferences, including free tickets and access to senior Reform figures, two people involved in this year’s summit told Morning Wire.

The approach is a sharp departure from last year’s gathering, when crypto payments firm Zebec was one of the flagship sponsors and the industry’s priorities were discussed on stage by some of the party’s most senior representatives. Home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf, who was then the party’s efficiency chief, also interviewed the founder of blockhain-based lending platform Aave Labs, as part of an event sponsored by the firm.

Reform cools on crypto firms

Expediting digital asset adoption has been a key plank of Reform’s economic pitch to voters, and as recently as October, the party published a landmark ‘Cryptoassets and Digital Finance Bill’.

Measures in the policy package, which Farage launched at a Las Vegas bitcoin festival, included the introduction of a reduced 10 per cent rate of capital gains tax for digital assets and plans to establish a sovereign bitcoin reserve. Writing in Morning Wire at the time, Yusuf hailed the drive as a path to making the UK a “crypto powerhouse”. The bill is no longer available on the party’s new-look website.

“There has been a concerted effort to dial down digital assets and crypto” at next week’s Birmingham conference, one person involved in the gathering told Morning Wire.

Reform’s sidelining of the industry comes as the party looks to move on from months of scrutiny over its ties with two crypto-linked donors.

Last month, Farage called, and then won, a by-election in his Clacton constituency to stave off a parliamentary probe into a £5m gift from the Anglo-Thai billionaire Christopher Harborne.

Harborne, who is worth an estimated £18bn, made the majority of his wealth from early bets on digital assets, including a 12 per cent stake in Tether – one of the world’s most popular stablecoins. Reform has also been dogged by its longstanding relationship with ‘Posh’ George Cottrell, a convicted fraudster whose fortune was partly built from crypto trading and investments.

One party figure told Morning Wire the decision to remove perks for the cryptoasset figures followed heightened interest in the party from more mainstream industries after its performance in May’s local elections.

The conference is set to feature the inaugural Reform UK business day. Heathrow will host a ‘lounge’ for a second year running – as it does at the conferences of most other political parties – while blue-chip firms like Google, Cadent Gas and Lloyds Bank are among those hosting panel sessions at its many fringe events.

A spokesman for Reform UK said: “Over the last year, we have been building connections and having conversations with business and industry about how we can deliver critical infrastructure, boost investment, bring down energy costs and grow the economy.

“The surge in sponsorships and record industry turnout at this year’s conference shows just how far we’ve come. Companies are engaging with Reform UK in unprecedented numbers because they take the prospect of a Reform government seriously. This year’s conference will be our biggest and boldest yet.”