Pardoned BitMEX founder Ben Delo is funding a Westminster political hub that lends support to a network of controversial right-wing politicians and influencers, an investigation from The Guardian and HOPE not hate has revealed. 

The hub, known as “The Sanctuary,” is made up of a number of rooms overlooking Westminster Abbey to which politicians, race scientists, and anti-abortion campaigners are given access free of charge. The rooms are reportedly used for events, office work, and podcasting.

Right-wing MP Rupert Lowe used the hub to launch his Restore Britain party after he was ousted from Reform UK. 

The race science magazine Aporia, which has published articles on race and IQ, has also hosted events at The Sanctuary alongside the anti-woke author Eric Kaufmann, who spoke about “the problems with… black culture” and how people should be “comfortable with a natural level of inequality.”

Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch have visited The Sanctuary to appear on right-wing podcast Triggernometry. 

Read more: BitMEX has now lost all US profits after founders plead guilty, lawyer says

A free speech festival promoting “anti-science, anti-expert, and anti-public health positions,” called The Battle of Ideas, uses The Sanctuary and has received £100,000 in funding from Delo. 

An annual summer party is hosted each year at the hub and attracts a host of right-wing figures. 

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Last year’s events saw the likes of former Conservative MP Michael Gove, former Reform UK Deputy Leader Ben Habib, Reform UK loyalists Matt Goodwin and James Orr, and Paul Coleman, the director of a right-wing Christian group that helped overturn the Roe v Wade legislation.

When Queen Elizabeth died, Delo, right-wing figure Jordan Peterson, and his wife, Tammy Roberts, watched the funeral from The Sanctuary. 

Delo doesn’t want The Sanctuary’s operations getting out

The Sanctuary takes great care to keep its operations under wraps, withholding its name from the building’s lobby plaques and telling users to keep quiet about the hub online. 

Delo was convicted for failing to implement money laundering checks at his crypto exchange that were compliant with the Bank Secrecy Act.

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Alongside his fellow BitMEX founders and the exchange itself, Delo was pardoned by US President Donald Trump last year as part of his attempts to appeal to the crypto industry. 

Read more: Trump pardons Ross Ulbricht but Silk Road deputy remains behind bars

Delo runs the hub alongside his chief of staff, Jeremy Hildreth, an American branding consultant and old Oxford friend.

Hildreth manages the day-to-day operations of The Sanctuary and has donated £26,755 in legal costs to Badenoch for an online harassment case in 2021.

The Sanctuary itself is decorated like a gentleman’s club, and is adorned with gothic architecture, a taxidermy penguin, pictures of Victorian colonists, and cabinets filled with expensive gin and champagne. 

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In one framed picture of Delo, there’s a letter from Claire Fox, who runs The Battle of Ideas, praising Delo as “our free speech hero.” A copy of Delo’s pardon from Donald Trump is also framed in the halls.

Delo has also portrayed himself as a generous philanthropist and says that he’ll donate half of his wealth to good causes. Delo claims he has donated £100 million, and earlier this month, he donated £20 million to a maths and physics institute. 

On top of free speech and public debate causes, he’s also reportedly donated to fields in neurodiversity and Commonwealth relations. Delo’s philanthropy efforts were also praised by Michael Gove, who said he was “proud to know” Delo. 

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Publicly traded web browser Opera (NASDAQ: OPRA) announced that it has committed to being a long-term holder of Ethereum Layer 2 Celo’s native token, CELO, according to press release published today, March 19.

Celo Core Co., the primary developer and steward of the L2, submitted a governance proposal today outlining the plan to restructure its five-year-old partnership with Opera, namely proposing to shift the browser giant “from a distribution partner to a long-term network stakeholder.”

If approved by the Celo community, the new structure has Opera set to receive an allocation of 160 million CELO tokens — worth about $13 million at current prices — from the network’s “unreleased treasury,” meaning the tokens would not be purchased from the open market.

CELO rallied over 7% on the day on the news, bucking a broader market slump, though the token remains 99% below its 2021 highs and was trading around $0.08 at time of writing.

Quarterly to One-Time Grant

Under the proposed deal, Opera would swap its existing quarterly grant arrangement for a one-time token payout that initiates an additional three-year partnership between the two organizations.

In December 2023, the Celo community approved a proposal to pay Opera $568,182 per quarter in CELO — dubbed strategic grants, with each grant put before a governance vote on a quarterly basis — through Q1 2026, for a total of nearly $5.7 million, calculated at the time. The approved 2023 proposal emphasizes that Opera intends to hold and stake CELO, and has the ability to participate actively in governance.

These grants were effectively a marketing deal to increase the adoption of Celo DApps, namely MiniPay, specifically across Africa, where Opera Mini was the most popular browser at the time, per the proposal.

The 160 million CELO allocation in today’s proposal, also presented as “a grant for distribution services,” represents what both firms note is a shift to a more long-term partnership and commitment to the Celo ecosystem.

The allocation makes up approximately 27% of CELO’s current circulating supply and 16% of its 1 billion maximum supply. The one-time token transfer would come from Celo’s treasury into an Opera-controlled wallet, with Opera’s governance influence capped at 10% of total staked CELO under normal circumstance, per the governance proposal.

The proposal has already drawn scrutiny from some in the Celo community. One member of the governance forum, under the username Ginsburg, left a comment on the proposal earlier today, raising concerns about the deal’s structure and requesting further clarity from the team:

“This proposal effectively allocates ~160M CELO to Opera in lieu of a cash payment, which introduces meaningful dilution (or at least supply overhang) for existing token holders. I understand the strategic intent—aligning Opera as a long-term stakeholder and scaling MiniPay distribution—but the key question seems to be whether the expected user growth justifies the size of this allocation. If this were a market purchase, it would clearly signal demand. In this case, it’s more akin to CELO using its token as equity to acquire distribution.”

The vote remains pending before the Celo community governance forum. Opera and Celo also announced plans for a joint roadshow in Southeast Asia and Latin America “to drive grassroots adoption and grow the Mini App ecosystem,” starting next month.

Five-Year Partnership

The original partnership between Celo and Opera began in June 2021, when Opera first integrated CELO and Celo’s native stablecoins into the browser’s built-in crypto wallet, bringing cUSD and cEUR to millions of users.

That relationship deepened significantly in September 2023 with the launch of MiniPay, Opera’s self-custodial stablecoin wallet built directly on Celo, which has since grown to 14 million account registrations and processed 420 million transactions across 66 countries, according to the release.

Celo’s stablecoin activity and user base began surging in late 2024 as MiniPay drove adoption globally. Stablecoins more broadly crossed into mainstream fintech in 2025, with total market cap rising 50% even as broader crypto declined.

According to L2Beat, Celo has approximately $247 million in total value secured, making it the largest chain in the validiums and optimiums category — but a fraction of the scale of major rollups like Arbitrum or Base, which each hold over $10 billion.

Where Celo stands out is in user activity: per Token Terminal, the network currently leads all Ethereum Layer 2s by daily active users, with roughly 660,000 DAUs — a figure Celo attributes largely to MiniPay’s global reach.

This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.

Certain market observers predicted that the asset’s price could soon surpass $50, while others cautioned traders to be extremely careful.

The lesser-known altcoin RIVER has defied the ongoing bear market, with its price spiking by double digits over the past seven days.

Some analysts expect the rally to continue, while others view the project as a red flag and warn investors to stay away.

How Much More?

RIVER is among the best-performing top 100 cryptocurrencies in the last week, jumping by 50% and currently trading at around $26 (per CoinGecko’s data). At one point, its market capitalization neared $550 million, whereas as of this writing, it stands at around $500 million.

One factor that may have contributed to the rally is the recent partnership between DIA and River, which is intended to provide the former’s omnichain stablecoin system with accurate, trustworthy price data.

The coin’s pump caught the eye of many analysts, including the popular Ali Martinez. Earlier this month, he claimed that RIVER “is looking bullish” since it has formed an “inverse head-and-shoulders” pattern and predicted that a pump above $20 could open the door to $57. Later on, Martinez confirmed the breakout, setting anything in the $45-$57 range as potential targets.

Kamran Asghar chipped in when RIVER was testing the “critical resistance zone” around $23. Back then, he argued that turning this into support could result in a “clear run” toward $40 and beyond.

Major Red Flags?

Despite the impressive price increase, others remain quite skeptical toward the cryptocurrency. X user Julius Elum noted that RIVER “looks good in the chart,” but claimed that it might be a “manipulatable token” by whales. In his view, entry between $10 and $15 is safe, hopping on the bandwagon at around $20 is risky, while the current levels represent FOMO.

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“It might be a planned liquidity grab. I don’t chase setups if it has formed this obvious conviction. Because most times, it’s a trap. I’d rather take entry when the conviction is still in the doubt stage. But if I must risk it, I will do so with caution,” the analyst concluded.

X user Nehal also sounded the alarm. They believe that there are major red flags surrounding RIVER, suggesting that investors should be aware of more than just a pump-and-dump volatility. The analyst went even further, stating that many traders have reported losing money because the price has moved against their positions. In a subsequent post on March 18, Nehal forecasted that RIVER could plummet below $5 soon.

Highlighting the risks related to the token is nothing new. Earlier this year, X user Erik said 94% of RIVER’s total supply is held by only five wallets, whereas Honey argued that the project resembles previous rug pull schemes.

Major League Baseball (MLB) announced that it had signed an “integrity protection” agreement with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as it separately inked a deal with prediction markets platform Polymarket. 

In a Thursday announcement, MLB said that its commissioner, Robert Manfred, signed a memorandum of understanding with CFTC Chair Michael Selig following the league’s request for “strong integrity protections in the rapidly evolving prediction market space.” In a separate deal, the league said it had reached an agreement for predictions market platform Polymarket to be its Official Prediction Market Exchange.

“The new agreements that we formed with Polymarket and the CFTC are imperative steps in proactively managing the new and rapidly growing prediction market space,” said Manfred.

In August, MLB sent a memo to players and clubs warning them about prediction markets, reminding them that the league’s gambling rules apply to those platforms. In November, two Cleveland Guardians pitchers were charged with sharing inside information about their play with sports bettors.

The deals were announced amid scrutiny from federal and state lawmakers on prediction markets platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi. In the US Congress, lawmakers have named Polymarket in proposed laws to crack down on bets related to military conflicts, while at the state level, both platforms are facing lawsuits related to betting on sporting events without a license.

Related: Bitcoin prediction markets see 70% chance BTC price crashes to $55K in 2026

The baseball season kicks off on March 26 with 22 teams playing across the US. As of Thursday, Polymarket has listed several event contracts for the league’s spring training games.

Will the CFTC agreement prevent state-level lawsuits over sports bets?

Although prediction markets platforms offer event contracts on a variety of topics such as US politics, weather, and pop culture, authorities in many US states have been challenging companies like Kalshi or Polymarket over sports bets and, in Arizona, election wagering. 

Selig, as the sole commissioner at the CFTC, has been publicly pushing for the agency’s “exclusive jurisdiction” over prediction markets, including through the proposal for a rule that could amend or issue new regulations for overseeing the companies.

“Calling a bet an ‘event contract’ doesn’t make it legal,” said the American Gaming Association in January. “Prediction markets are exploiting regulatory gaps to offer unregulated sports wagers.”

Cointelegraph reached out to Polymarket for comment on potential lawsuits over the deal but had not received a response at the time of publication.

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