In brief
- Nigel Farage called Monday for the British financial watchdog to better regulate crypto.
- Farage in May said that he would establish a Bitcoin reserve—like Trump did in the U.S.—if elected prime minister.
- The Brexit mastermind has long spoken about the benefits of using digital assets.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said Monday that the digital asset space needs better regulation in Britain.
Speaking at the Digital Asset Summit 2025 in London, Farage said that there is no regulated market for crypto in the UK right now. He called for “sensible regulation, not the ludicrous regulation we now have on equities and elsewhere” in the country.
“This whole area of digital assets and crypto just isn’t being talked about at all,” Farage said. “We’ve got no regulated market. You need some regulation—a sensible level of regulation.”
He added: “My deep frustration—despite one speech by [ex-UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak] on this, the government of today has done nothing in this area.”
The former leader of the Conservative Party Rishi Sunak, who was PM from 2022 to 2024, said back in 2022 that he wanted the UK to be “a global crypto asset technology hub.”
Despite this, not a single major party mentioned crypto in their manifestos ahead of the 2024 elections in the UK.
The co-founder of UK lobbying firm Athena Technologies, Conrad Young, in 2024 told Decrypt that this was “a significant missed opportunity.”
Farage, an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, is now pushing for a crypto-friendly framework in the country—and similarly is presenting himself as an advocate for crypto investors and builders in his country as he makes his case to potentially be future UK prime minister.
“Whether you like or dislike many of the political positions I’ve taken over the past three decades is frankly irrelevant: When it comes to your industry, when it comes to growth in this industry, then I am your champion,” he said. “I make things change.”
In May, Farage said at the Bitcoin 2025 conference that he’d slash crypto capital gains taxes and force the Bank of England to establish a Bitcoin reserve if elected.
Widely known as the mastermind of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, Farage and his Reform UK party are currently popular in the polls.
The former member of the European Parliament got his account with British bank Coutts closed in 2023. Since then, right-winger Farage has argued that crypto can solve “debanking”—again echoing comments from President Trump and his sons.
“I am the most famous case of being debanked in this country. Here is personal sovereignty—you’ve got your own money, you’re in charge,” Farage said Monday. “The reason that I was the first prominent person in British politics to adopt crypto, to talk about crypto, to try and legitimize crypto… I could see this is the way it was going.”
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