Crypto donations could entirely corrupt British politics. Labour must act quickly | Liam Byrne

Our party finance rules are riddled with loopholes. Shell companies. Unincorporated associations. Anonymous donations routed through digital campaigns between elections. All legal. All ripe for abuse. And now, a new gateway has opened: cryptocurrency.

When someone buys a cryptocurrency their identity is anonymous, but the transaction itself is recorded on the blockchain and is publicly visible. So far we know that this anonymity has allowed cryptocurrencies to be used to fund everything from sanctions evasion to election interference. A recent report from the Centre for Information Resilience revealed that A7A5, a new “digital rouble”, has already been linked to sanctions evasions by Russians. The report also found that Ilan Shor, a…

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