Nigel Farage: The Secret Crypto Organization Backed by Reform’s Biggest Donor

Who bought the world’s largest safe-haven asset – gold?

China? Japan? One of the Gulf countries, perhaps?

In fact, the single biggest buyer of the precious metal last year was a company you’ve probably never heard of — a crypto company called Tether.

The El Salvador-based company manages the world’s largest stablecoin, USDT, which is a form of crypto backed by hard currency.

It acts as a conduit between risky, volatile cryptocurrencies and the mainstream financial system, like the offshore dollar.

Yet Tether bought more gold than anyone else last year, according to data from the European Central Bank.

A James Bond-style Switzerland would have it stockpiled in its former nuclear stockpile, says Tether’s boss.

Teiser says the US government owes $135bn (£101bn) to some G20 nations; And that’s more than South Korea.

It is almost a big player with the characteristics of a private central bank. But it employs only 200 people.

He is also, perhaps unwittingly, embroiled in questions surrounding the funding of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party.

One of Tether’s most important shareholders is Christopher Harbor.

Last August, Harborne made the biggest party donation in British history – £9 million in cash to Farage’s Reform Party. It gave a further £3m to Reform in October and a further £3m in January. All contributions are recognized.

Harbourn direct to Farage 5 m. Before Farage resigned as MP.

Farage and Harborne both said there were no strings attached to the personal gift or political donations to Reform.

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey recently confirmed that Farage raised the issue of cryptocurrency regulation and related central bank digital currency issues with him in September last year.

Farage has made his intentions “very clear”, but said the “intervention” has not changed the bank’s policy, and that he is looking at “lobbying” in general and knows how to reduce it.

There was one particular issue that Farage was concerned about – speculation that the Bank of England would push ahead with a cap on holdings of sterling coins worth between £10,000 and £20,000.

The industry has been working hard on this.

My understanding is that Farage didn’t bring up Tether with the governor specifically, but talked about stable coin regulation in general.

It raises reasonable questions about the exact details of that discussion and the extent of any benefit to Tether and its shareholders from a change in Bank of England policy.

The reform leader has already been outspoken about accepting cryptocurrencies.

“Tether is going to be considered a $500 billion company,” he told LBC presenter Nick Ferrari a day before his meeting with Bailey in September.

“This world is very big, and I have been advocating for years that London should accept it. We need to be an international business center under the proper control of this thing.”

In a wider discussion, Farage’s team said: “His comments to Andrew Bailey are consistent with our long-standing belief that the UK should be a global hub for regulated cryptocurrency innovation and investment.”

For that matter, when Reform went to the polls last May, the only bill it published was the Cryptoassets and Digital Finance Bill.

It had a temporary reference to a fixed coinage, and no reference to the Bank’s existing plan to limit private holdings.

I read it and downloaded it.

He has since disappeared from the Reform website and the web in general.