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Three political parties in the UK now accept donations in cryptocurrency, despite concerns about the potential for foreign interference from the unregulated currencies.
Reform UK made headlines when they became the first major party to begin accepting crypto donations in May 2025.
But it has now emerged that the far-right Homeland Party and a ‘direct democracy’ group called The Other Party are also accepting donations in the currency.
The far-right Advance party, the new outfit set up by former Reform UK deputy leader Ben Habib and seemingly endorsed by X owner Elon Musk, is also considering accepting donations in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
On its website it states: “We are not currently accepting donations by cryptocurrency, but we will update our website in due course if we do…Any official cryptocurrency details we set up in the future will be posted here for validation.”
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While Reform UK uses an external company, Polish firm Radom Pay, to process its crypto donations and check for donors’ permissibility, this does not appear to be the case for Homeland or The Other Party. Homeland only appears to permit crypto donations made under the value of £500, the legal threshold for checks having to be made on donors’ voting status. The Other Party asks donors to fill in a Google Form with their contact details if wishing to donate more than £500’s worth of crypto currency.
There are growing calls for Labour to ban crypto donations to parties outright as the Government’s Representation of the People Bill had its first parliamentary debate last Monday.
Anti-corruption and many Labour backbenchers groups fear that cryptocurrencies make it easier to hide the true source of donations, potentially further opening the door to foreign interference in UK politics.
The Other Party says it wants to “bind our representatives by law to the outcomes of the decisions reached by their constituents.” It has crypto wallets set up for donating to the party directly through various forms of the digital currency. There is a separate process for donations over £500.
The Homeland Party meanwhile says on its site: “We can accept cryptocurrency donations from anyone up to the equivalent of £500 in a calendar year.”
Reform UK’s Crypto Donations Put Under Spotlight as Experts Warn It’s ‘Impossible to Trace’ Foreign Cash
Anti-corruption campaigners raise the alarm over loopholes that could allow large sums of untraceable money to slip past checks
Money given under the value of £500 is not actually classed as a donation by the Electoral Commission and as such is effectively unregulated and unmonitored. It is understood that for crypto donations, this would be the current market value of the cryptocurrency. For example, £500 is currently worth around 0.00949 Bitcoins, however the value fluctuates constantly.
As the EC says on its website: “Under PPERA [the primary law governing political finance], a donation is money, goods or services given to a party without charge or on non-commercial terms, with a value of over £500…
“Donations of £500 or less are outside the scope of PPERA and you do not need to record or report them.
“However, you must be alert to situations where it appears that a donor is attempting to evade PPERA. It is an offence to attempt to evade the controls on donations. For example, if a number of donations of £400 are made from the same source in similar circumstances in an attempt to evade the permissibility rules.”
Spotlight on Corruption argues a major issue with crypto and micro donations is that it is feasible for a bad actor to donate £500 a significant number of times and go undetected by creating multiple crypto wallets. There is no suggestion that these parties have taken illicit donations.
While transactions using crypto are recorded on a public ‘legder’, in theory making them more transparent than cash, a briefing from the anti-corruption group adds: “Bad actors looking to undermine UK democracy, or to get around the rules, can conceal or obfuscate the true source of their crypto donations through the use of tools such as secrecy coins, mixer accounts, ‘smurfing’, ‘chain hopping’, and coin-swapping services.” The advent of artificial intelligence tools can plausibly automate this process to split large donations into many smaller ones.