These Are The Crypto Billionaires Up Farage

Nigel Farage has never looked less comfortable than when he's defending the 5 million pound gift he accepted from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne. >> You haven't spent any of it. >> It's none of your business. It's literally none of your How much of your salary do you spend on beer, on on petrol? It's none of your business. >> I think it is the public's business to know >> the public's business. >> Well, it's being investigated by the parliamentary standards committee, so it's somebody's business. You're saying you need security, a legitimate point. How much of that money have you spent on security so far? >> I'm sorry. Well, I know I'm not going to answer that deliberately. Willfully. >> Obviously, instead of answering those questions, Nigel Farage called that stupid by-election, which he's now won, but the parliamentary investigation has now resumed. Um that is probably going to focus on the timing of his 5 billion 5 million pound gift, sorry, not 5 billion, 5 million pound gift from Christopher Harborne. Um and the issue is whether or not he could be considered a public or private individual when he received the money. Um so, it was a bit before the election. If he was a politician at the point he received the money, he should have declared it. If he was a private citizen, he can say um he didn't need to declare it. That will be what most of the debate entails. Um however, um from my perspective, the details about the donation in the first place are the more interesting elements of this story, and specifically who Christopher Harborne is, why he backed Farage. Right, this to me is where sort of the potential corruption, the interest come in. Um the investigative outlet DeSmog has a new report on Harborne. Um his crypto company Tevver, or crypto company he sort of part owns, Tevver, and the links between Tevver, Reform, and the Trump White House. Um the article was written by Sam Brighten, Ollie Haynes, both previous contributors to this show. Um I caught up with Sam earlier today, and I started by asking him to talk about the company at the center of this political and financial network. That's Tevver. >> Basically, it it issues a crypto coin, a stable coin as it calls it called USDT. Um and why it's different from other crypto firms is that it backs its cryptocurrency with dollars and other assets, which is why it's called a stable coin. Um whereas like the accusation is that Bitcoin is like based on air as is a lot of other cryptocurrencies. Tether, hence the name, is actually tethered to the US dollar, which in theory makes it less volatile. Um but the company itself um and the currency, it's it's huge. Um it's the biggest stable coin provider in the world. So, it's an absolute colossus in this industry and until a few years ago, certainly in the UK, hadn't really been talked about. >> Members of the audience might be thinking, well, it's a colossus of the stable coin industry, but what the hell is a stable coin industry? Now, from before reading your article, I hadn't realized quite how big a deal Tether is. So, you're saying it's it's at the moment looking to secure an injection of private capital that would give it a valuation of 500 billion dollars, which make it one of the biggest companies in the world. Um and you say that given Harborne owns 13% of Tether, so Christopher Harborne. If it reaches this valuation, Harborne would become the world's 30th richest man. And I think so when when we hear about, you know, Farage getting donations from this Thai-based crypto billionaire, you kind of just think of him as sort of, you know, just any old rich guy um a bit like um Aaron Banks or something. But this is someone who is is a really, really big deal um when it comes to global finance. >> Yeah, he's a super, super rich guy. I mean, to put it into a bit of context, if Tether was valued at uh 500 billion, it would be in the same realms of like OpenAI and uh you know, the AI giants that uh that are achieving ludicrous valuations, to be honest. So, yeah, Harborne, you know, he doesn't have an executive role in Tether, so he doesn't sort of make any decisions there. He's just sort of a passive shareholder. He's held on to like 13% of the company, which could balloon astronomically if it achieves this, you know, this injection of capital, which would allow him sort of unlimited resources to pile into Reform to to buy British democracy potentially. So yeah, you can you can trace his source of of money and therefore his power politically very directly back to this to this firm. And he's fairly sort of passive passive interest in it. Harborne's given more than 25 million pounds to Reform as, you know, as you're sort of pointing out. If he becomes the world's 30th richest man, he's going to be able to afford a lot more than that. Um, but what's his official explanation for why he's he's given that money? Does he just say I'm a very rich guy who happens to believe in, you know, independence from the European Union and less migration to Britain? Is that the argument? Yeah, he's a really funny one as most of these billionaire donors are actually. When when you sort of study them, the reasons that they give for donating or a lot of the actually a lot of the personal philosophies that they hold are quite incongruous to why he's donating to Reform. So I'll give you an I'll give you an example of that actually, Michael. So he owns a wellness retreat in Thailand in Koh Samui that's just like this woke retreat where people can go do yoga and meditation and there's like no alcohol and no phones allowed by the pool. It's the sort of thing that would be like would be flayed by by the Telegraph on its front page if it was someone else who was owning it. But his stated reason above all else for giving to Farage is Brexit is to get Brexit done properly, whatever that means, you know. You imagine it would mean closer to a no deal scenario. Should we cast our minds back a few years to what that looked like? So, you know, complete separation from the European Union and pulling us closer to to Trump's America. And what Harborn is essentially is is a Thatcherite. He credits, you know, his not just his his political ideologies, but his personal decisions to Margaret Thatcher. So, he decided to go and study engineering at Cambridge because of Thatcher, because he saw Thatcher speak in Westminster. Harborn attended the Uber posh Westminster school just around the corner and he says that we need to go back to the 1980s. Farage, as we know, despite all of his man of the people chat is a Thatcherite. That's That's the reason it comes back to raw neoliberal economics as it as it often does. >> And and what your article is really pointing out is how Tether, so the world's biggest stablecoin company, potentially worth $500 million, is at the middle of a network of right-wing politics on both sides of the Atlantic. And I mean, we've just discussed the connection to Farage. When it comes to the United States, the connection is via Howard Lutnick, who is Trump's Commerce Secretary. So, could you talk about the relationship between Howard Lutnick and Tether? >> Yeah, so it goes back a few years. So, back in 2021, Tether was in a spot of bother. I won't go into the details, but it had been fined $60 million. Tether and its various associate companies basically bankers didn't really want anything to do with it. Apart from Howard Lutnick's firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, that rode to the rescue and said, "We'll do business with you. We'll help you to build up those assets, those dollars that underpin the the success and the valuation of Tether. Um and in the process, Cantor Fitzgerald, which was owned by Lutnick, took a 5% stake in Tether. Um in the subsequent years, Tether's valuation, its profits have boomed. In 2024, uh its profits were one and a half times that of McDonald's. It's been called the most profitable company in history by employee. And that means that Cantor Fitzgerald's stake in the firm has ballooned accordingly and it's worth up to 25 billion quid now. Um Lutnick himself had to divest his shares in Cantor Cantor Fitzgerald um when he joined the White House, but those shares in the company were passed to his children. Uh and in the in the sort of melee of that takeover, Tether happened to provide a loan to Lutnick's children. We don't know if that helped them to buy the shares, but it happened at the same time, so make your own minds up. Uh and the final piece of this jigsaw is that while Lutnick was overseeing the transition team and while he was in he's been in the White House, um they've drafted obviously heavily pro-crypto legislation that Bloomberg's reported, you know, Lutnick had a hand in and would directly benefit Tether and therefore the financial financial interests of both Lutnick's children and Nigel Farage, your biggest donor. >> Tether and crypto in general is a very politically exposed industry, isn't it? So, I mean, lots of people would accuse it of saying it's it's basically an allowing money laundering um because it's an unregulated realm of the financial sector and it allows for anonymity. And obviously the the share prices of well, this is a private company, but the sort of the value of these companies would would tumble if there were to be strict political regulation. And there've been lots of calls for political regulation because why are we allowing these companies that facilitate drug dealing and money laundering to to operate freely. So, it is very important for the future of Tev's profitability that they have allies in well, particularly the White House. Obviously, that's the best ally to have. But also, it wouldn't be any harm to have an ally in Downing Street as well if if Nigel Farage were to to win a general election. So, I suppose yeah, talk to me about this from from Tev's perspective. Are they buying up politicians on both sides of the the Atlantic? They've sort of perhaps opportunistically allied with right-wing populism because they see this as a way where they can prevent regulation coming forward which would threaten their business model. >> Yeah, absolutely. I'll talk more generally about the the industry, I think, for for for the sake of not getting sued. But I think the industry as a whole, it's facing a a political battle at this moment where you've got governments across the world considering how to regulate the industry, as you say. Like, do they keep it on a tight leash? Do they allow it free reign? Like, this is all up for grabs, basically. This massive industry that seems to have ballooned overnight. And yes, what essentially the industry has done, um particularly in the US, is to pile millions and millions of quids um into particularly right-wing politicians because they're in favor of deregulation in order to um in order to bring about that world, in order to essentially um conduct their business as they please. Um I mean, it's deeply ironic, actually, that Donald Trump called uh called cryptocurrencies called I think he called Bitcoin a con um just a few years ago. Uh and last year, he made over a billion quid from his various dodgy crypto schemes. And he's, you know, probably the most pro-crypto politician in the world at this minute, closely followed by Nigel Farage. So, they've seen that they can get a real a huge return on their investment by piling as much money as poss- possible into politics. And I think this is it's just represent- representative of the fact that all corporate donations are corrupting to our political process, and in my personal view, they should be they should be outlawed. You know, you've got essentially a guy and let's face it, 25 million quid is an awful lot of money um maybe not to Nigel Farage, but to most people, um but it's a drop in the ocean for someone like Christopher Harborne, who's you know, who's worth 18 billion quid on paper as it is currently, and that's even without Tether's valuation uh ballooning. Uh you know, in all and he and he voted that 25 million quid to essentially buy a political party. I'm not saying Harborne himself has any personal sort of financial um he's making a financial play, um but a lot of donors are. A lot of donors have put in relatively small sums of money into our political system, and essentially buying our whole the buying the mechanism through which policy can be can be written. Um and I think there's I think there's no more active industry on that front currently than the crypto industry. >> And isn't that cuz I know you're saying sort of like this is a a lesson about all political donations and how they're corrupting, and obviously I you know, I I I take your point. Um I think you're correct, but I do think there is something even more specific about crypto that is perhaps under discussed, because if it were the case that sort of you know, there was a wind farm company donating to the Labour party or some car manufacturers donating to the Tory party, you know, fair enough. These are industries that everyone understands. Um you might have different views about them, but they're part of the real economy. Um If these are sort of You know, there are some businesses where you can say they're to some degree part of civil society. Crypto isn't one of them. So, that I I don't think you speak to any voters who think, "Oh, yeah, crypto. That's a useful industry." Like, I still haven't really heard an explanation of why crypto is useful other than it allows people to launder money because it allows for anonymity as money is moved across borders. So, if you've got this as sort of the key funder as an industry to you know, the Republican Party in the United States and reform here. That is there's something new about that, right? Because it's always been the case that businesses have donated to political parties and then hoped for some favors in return. Now, that's often been to the detriment of voters. Sometimes it, you know, might have helped grow. Who knows? There's arguments like that made about China, which is to say that sort of sometimes the relationship between politicians and businesses sort of isn't necessarily the most corrosive thing in the world. But, when the business in question is socially useless and also socially quite dangerous, it does seem like something we probably should be talking more about. >> Yeah, absolutely. And I think they benefit from that sense of anonymity. I think they try to have it both ways currently, that they donate very heavily to politics. Um but also they want to remain in the shadows for as as long as possible. Um I would say though, I mean, essentially I Yeah, I think you're correct in that crypto is elaborate an elaborate form of betting. Um basically, you put your money in crypto in the hopes that it'll inflate and that you'll get a nice a nice payback in a few years time. And it's, you know, for many it's sort of recreational rather than anything productive. But, I would also say that since basically 2010 um British politics has been funded by the City of London, by hedge funds, by investment bank by investment bankers. And, you know, do they do anything more more productive than than than than crypto traders do. I Yeah, I think it's more known about what hedge funds do than the crypto industry. But in terms of that, you know, you're just hedging your bets on a particular a particular company or to a particular a particular stock versus you're hedging your bets on a particular cryptocurrency. I don't think there's a massive there's a massive difference, and I think the fundamentally the playbook has been sort of written by finance, by the City of London for the past 15 years, and crypto is just following in that footsteps in those footsteps. >> Yeah, I suppose that's a good point. So, the sort of contrast I'm making is maybe to something which hasn't existed for a very long time, which is sort of when you got major employers. So, maybe you got trade unions donating to the Labour Party and then major employers donating to the Conservative Party, and you can sort of see how, you know, that that, while not ideal, sort of is is sort of potentially you can argue has some legitimacy, whereas with crypto and you're saying with the City of London, neither of those can make that claim. Do you think this could bring >> down Nigel Farage? >> Yeah, I do. I do. Um, and I think this is the only only the beginning. I think we've only scratched the surface, you know, we've got we've got the parliamentary investigation into Arbuthnot's £5 million gift, which is almost inevitably going to find against Farage, and then we'll have to we'll all have to trot back to to Clacton again in a few weeks. Um, and the police are investigating, you know, various donations made to made to Reform. Um, I think the this will be this will be extremely off-putting to new donors as well to the party who see that there's an immense amount of scrutiny, justifiably, and they're not they're not going to want to, you know, involve themselves with with an organization that's that's embroiled in scandal and you know, a whiff of impropriety. Um, and I think fundamentally, you know, as with most politicians, Boris Johnson was very similar in this respect, once they lose that man of the people aura, once people think you're the same as the rest of them, you're only in it for yourself, I think I think you're just you're just setting yourself up for failure. And I think that although it will take it will take a short while for it to break through to the population at large, I think that's inevitably the course that Farage is on. >> I mean I I suppose the the counter would be that, you know, Donald Trump's relationship to crypto has sort of involved personal enrichment, which is way more out there than Nigel Farage's. I mean the the details about Nigel Farage aren't good, but Donald Trump literally has started his own Trump coins to fleece his supporters. So, you know, this new world of shameless companies that serve no social function and politicians who are only out to serve themselves, you know, it's not necessarily one that has proven itself to be unfit to thrive in the present political moment. >> It's true, although let's see what's what happened at the midterms. I think the there's not really been a test of Trump's political standing in the sort of the high corruption era of the second Trump administration. I mean, you know, you just look at Trump's poll ratings, they're at rock bottom. Reform slipped by 10% or more in the polls over the past year. I think that voters are I think obviously you've got that sort of hardcore base who will support them no matter what, and say that oh, you know, they've earned it. The this is just payback for Brexit and all they've done in the world. But I think there's a lot of voters, and you you can see this in the polling actually, that a lot of voters 2024 conservative voters who are considering reform, they're now going back to the conservatives because there's just that sense that everything needs to be right for Farage to really like to really um produce a groundswell towards him. And I think lots of sort of traditional Tories who um consider themselves to behave properly and you know got this sort of um ethical base to them um although economically you know their their ideologies might be questionable. I think that Farage is really off-putting. I think Farage's sort of brazen self-interest and the way in which he's trying to make money from politics it seems. I think that's quite off-putting to a lot of the sort of home counties conservatives who might otherwise be considering the party. Um and I think as a result he needs those people. He absolutely needs to uh he needs to destroy the Conservative Party in order to win office and if a lot of those people are sort of in two minds as to whether to back him I think that I I just don't think he's going to get that critical mass needed to take him over the line especially given that he's not you know one of the two dominant parties.