Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe escalate feud with new war of words
The bitter war of words between Nigel Farage and Reform MP Rupert Lowe has dramatically escalated with the pair launching fierce new personal attacks on each other.
Mr Farage revealed accusations of bullying by Mr Lowe and accused him of falling out with all his fellow Reform UK MPs, with too many “outbursts” using “inappropriate language”.
And he took the highly unusual step of quoting a Labour minister, Mike Kane, who said after a confrontation with Mr Lowe in the Commons that his anger “showed a man not in charge of his own faculties”.
On Friday, party chairman and Farage lieutenant Zia Yusuf and chief whip Lee Anderson MP disclosed accusations that two female workers had complained of “serious bullying” in Mr Lowe’s offices, and said he had been reported to police over allegations he threatened Mr Yusuf with physical violence.
Mr Lowe, who has been suspended by the parliamentary party, denied the claims.
The worsening of the feud between the Reform UK leader and the millionaire MP for Great Yarmouth came in articles in The Sunday Telegraph in which they both furiously attacked each other.
Lowe alleges ‘witch hunt’
Mr Lowe stepped up his verbal onslaught on Mr Farage by claiming that a “witch hunt” against him risked destroying Reform’s attempts at removing Labour from power.
And he claimed that at a time when Reform UK’s poll ratings were rising the attacks on him by the party would be a turn-off to voters, declaring: “Infighting failed the Tories – and it’s failing Reform.”
Mr Farage also began his Telegraph article by claiming: “If the last general election taught us anything, it is that the public does not like political parties that engage in constant infighting.”
But he claimed that thanks to Mr Lowe “unloading a barrage of criticisms against our operations and its main actors”, Reform’s unity has been dented.
Rupert Lowe MP. Pic: PA
‘Containment strategies invariably fail’
Mr Farage said Mr Lowe had “managed to fall out with all his parliamentary colleagues in one way or another”, adding: “We did our best to keep a lid on things but, in the end, containment strategies invariably fail.”
He then referred to a Commons clash with Mr Kane just before Christmas, after Mr Lowe staged a debate about a damaged ship containing toxic cargo docked in his Great Yarmouth constituency.
“Mr Lowe was unhappy with the answer that he received from Mr Kane and, at the end of the debate, he crossed the floor to make his feelings known,” Mr Farage wrote.
“A confrontation ensued. Heated language was heard. The minister’s shoulder was pushed. In the end, the Serjeant at Arms had to step in to calm things down between the two parliamentarians.
“Commenting on Mr Lowe’s conduct later, Mr Kane (said) ‘the anger displayed towards me clearly showed a man not in charge of his own faculties’. Nobody in Reform UK said anything publicly about what had happened. Instead, we carried on.
“Yet the fact is that, sadly, there have been too many similar outbursts from Mr Lowe, often involving the use of inappropriate language, to the despair of our chief whip, Lee Anderson.
“I have been surprised and saddened at this behaviour. Certainly, I never saw anything like it in the European Parliament in 2019 when I was the leader of the Brexit Party and Mr Lowe was an MEP colleague.”
Read more:
Lowe invites Farage to dinner
Farage gives up sole control of Reform
Party passes 200,000 members
(L-R) Nigel Farage and party chairman Zia Yusuf. Pic: PA
On bullying allegations, Mr Farage wrote: “Last week, the chairman of Reform UK, Zia Yusuf, showed me two letters sent by female members of staff to our party headquarters. Each letter contained an accusation of workplace bullying involving Mr Lowe.
“One of the incidents in question is alleged to have taken place within the parliamentary estate. Both women’s letters stated that these allegations had been reported to the parliamentary authorities.
“As a responsible political party, Reform UK has a duty of care to every single member of staff, whether they are employed by us directly or indirectly.
“With that in mind, I believe that our chairman was entirely right for Reform to appoint a KC to conduct an independent inquiry. It is inconceivable that we could simply ignore such allegations.”
Pic: PA
‘I will not tolerate these falsehoods’
In his Telegraph article, Mr Lowe repeated his claim that there is no credible evidence against him and he was removed from the party before any investigation had started.
“I will not tolerate these falsehoods, and discussions have already taken place with my legal team,” he wrote. “Is it a surprise that these allegations were made public the day after I made reasonable criticisms of Nigel Farage and the Reform leadership?
“It is a witch hunt, plain for all to see. I have been entirely frozen out of the Reform machine over the last few months, in a deliberate and calculated way.”
Without naming Mr Farage, deputy leader Richard Tice or Mr Yusuf, he said the Reform UK leadership was unable even to accept the most mild constructive criticism.
Turning on Mr Yusuf, he wrote: “The allegations against me from the chairman relate to an incident in December, but he only reported them to the police the day after my reasonable questioning was published.
“Take from that what you will. I don’t feel sorry for myself. I feel sorry for the millions of decent British men and women who put their faith in Reform. They deserve better than this vicious charade.”
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And warning of the damage the feuding was causing, Mr Lowe said: “Everything has been put at risk. Everything. The future of the Right in Britain is now in peril. How can Reform claim to be a party awaiting government when they can’t even follow basic process?
“Reform has been rising in the polls for months. But this spectre of infighting will leave the party looking unserious and turn voters off. Infighting failed the Tories – and it’s failing Reform.”
But Mr Lowe concluded with an olive branch. “On multiple occasions, I have invited Nigel Farage for dinner over the last few months,” he revealed. “Every single one has been refused or ignored.
“Again, I offer a public invitation to Nigel. Let’s have dinner and resolve this in the matter that our members, supporters and country would expect. Any time, any place.”
He added: “I want Reform to be professional, to be fair, to be serious. We must offer a credible alternative to the uniparty that has so failed so spectacularly.
“The leadership’s behaviour this week has undermined that cause, not only in the eyes of the electorate, but also in those of serious individuals across business and industry that any party of government needs to win over.”
Cryptocurrency markets have extended their decline despite much-awaited political developments taking place in the US.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed a funding bill to end the record 43-day US government shutdown, after the bill passed through the Senate on Monday and was approved by the House of Representatives on Wednesday.
The bill provides funding to the government until Jan. 30, 2026, and gives Democrats and Republicans more time to strike a deal on broader funding plans for the year ahead.
The end of the shutdown failed to lift demand among Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) buyers. Spot BTC ETFs saw a brief resurgence on Tuesday, attracting $524 million in inflows, but outflows quickly resumed, with a whopping $866 million in daily net outflows on Thursday, according to Farside Investors.
Bitcoin fell to a six-month low of $95,900 on Friday, a level last seen in May as its biggest demand drivers continued to lack momentum.
Investments from ETFs and Michael Saylor’s Strategy were the two main vehicles driving demand for Bitcoin’s price this year, according to Ki Young Ju, founder and CEO of crypto analytics platform CryptoQuant.
Bitcoin ETF demand stalls as US shutdown optimism fails to lift sentiment
The lack of demand for spot Bitcoin ETFs is raising concerns about Bitcoin’s prospects for the rest of the year.
On Monday, the US Senate approved the funding bill and brought Congress a step closer to ending the shutdown. The legislation headed for a full vote in the House of Representatives, which occurred on Wednesday.
Despite optimistic news from the US, spot Bitcoin ETF investments remained flat on Monday, with just $1.2 million of inflows, according to data from Farside Investors.
“Despite the US shutdown seemingly ending, and the S&P and Gold bouncing hard, Bitcoin ETFs saw NO bid yesterday,” said Capriole Investments founder, Charles Edwards, adding that this is not a dynamic we want to see continue.
“Risk assets usually see a strong bid in the weeks out of the Shutdown. Still time to turn this ship around, but it needs to turn,” Edwards wrote in a Tuesday X post.
Spot Bitcoin ETF inflows were the primary driver of Bitcoin’s momentum in 2025, Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets research, Geoff Kendrick, told Cointelegraph recently.
Bitwise exec says 2026 will be crypto’s real bull year; here’s why
Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan is more confident that crypto markets will boom in 2026, particularly as there hasn’t been a late 2025 rally.
Speaking to Cointelegraph at The Bridge conference in New York City on Wednesday, Hougan said a crypto market rally at the end of 2025 would have fit the four-year cycle thesis, meaning 2026 would mark the start of a bear market, similar to 2022 and 2018.
When asked to revise his prediction about whether the crypto market will boom in 2026, Hougan said: “I’m actually more confident in that quote. The biggest risk was [if] we ripped into the end of 2025 and then we got a pullback.”
Hougan said interest in the Bitcoin debasement trade, stablecoins and tokenization would continue to accelerate, while arguing that Uniswap’s fee switch proposal introduced on Monday would reinvigorate interest in decentralized finance protocols in the coming year.
“I think the underlying fundamentals are just so sound,” Hougan said. “I think these earlier forces, institutional investment, regulatory progress, stablecoins, tokenization, I just think those are too big to keep down. So I think 2026 will be a good year.”
Arthur Hayes tells Zcash holders to withdraw from CEXs and “shield” assets
The privacy coin sector returned to the spotlight after BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes urged Zcash holders to withdraw their assets from centralized exchanges (CEXs).
On Wednesday, Hayes told holders to “shield” their assets, a feature that enables private transactions within the Zcash network. “If you hold $ZEC on a CEX, withdraw it to a self-custodial wallet and shield it,” Hayes wrote on X.
The comments came as Zcash (ZEC) saw sharp price swings in the last few days. The token rallied to $723 on Saturday before dropping to $504 on Sunday. It then surged to a high of $677 on Monday, only to see another sharp decline. At the time of writing, ZEC was trading at about $450, marking a 37% decline from its Saturday high.
Analysts had warned that ZEC might undergo a sharp correction due to its relative strength index (RSI) reaching its highest reading after continuing to rally above its overbought zone.
Vitalik Buterin champions decentralization in “Trustless Manifesto”
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has authored and signed the new “Trustless Manifesto,” which seeks to uphold core values of decentralization and censorship resistance and push builders to refrain from adding intermediaries and checkpoints for the sake of adoption.
The Trustless Manifesto, also authored by Ethereum Foundation researchers Yoav Weiss and Marissa Posner, said crypto platforms sacrifice trustlessness from the first moment that they integrate a hosted node or centralized relayer, explaining that while it feels harmless, it becomes a habit, and with each passing checkpoint, the protocol becomes less and less permissionless.
“Trustlessness is not a feature to add after the fact. It is the thing itself,” the Ethereum Foundation members said in the manifesto published Wednesday. “Without it, everything else — efficiency, UX, scalability — is decoration on a fragile core.”
“When complexity tempts us to centralize, we must remember: every line of convenience code can become a choke point.”
While the manifesto wasn’t aimed at any particular person or company, some Ethereum layer 2s have been criticized for sacrificing decentralization to focus on scalability to speed up adoption.
Sonic Labs pivots from speed to survival with business-first strategy
Sonic Labs, the organization behind the Sonic layer-1 blockchain, announced a major strategic shift as it pivots from emphasizing transaction speed to building long-term business value and token sustainability.
After claiming industry-leading performance last year, Sonic Labs said its next chapter will focus on upgrades that deliver measurable financial outcomes, including new Ethereum and Sonic Improvement Proposals (EIPs and SIPs), token supply reductions and revamped rewards for network participants.
“Every decision we make moving forward will be guided by the principles of building real value, with price, growth, and sustainability always in focus,” said Mitchell Demeter, the new CEO of Sonic Labs.
The focus aims to bring “measurable, lasting value” for builders, validators and tokenholders, wrote Demeter in a Tuesday X post. “Our mission at Sonic is to move beyond hype and build a sustainable business model for a layer one, that creates, captures, and returns real value to tokenholders.”
The new fee monetization upgrade will include a tiered reward system for builders and fixed rewards for validators.
Sonic Labs will also increase the rate of programmatic Sonic (S) token burns, which means permanently removing tokens from circulation to tighten the supply.
Sonic claims to be the world’s fastest Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chain, with a “true” finality of 720 milliseconds (ms) — the assurance that a transaction is irreversible, which occurs after it is added to a block on the blockchain ledger.
DeFi market overview
According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, most of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week in the red.
The privacy-preserving Dash (DASH) token fell 45% to stage the biggest decline in the top 100, followed by the Internet Computer (ICP) token, down over 27% on the weekly chart.
Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education regarding this dynamically advancing space.
The UK’s central bank, the Bank of England (BOE), has released a proposed regulatory regime for stablecoins. The consultation paper took into account the perspectives of the crypto industry, but some observers say it remains restrictive.
BOE released the document on Nov. 10 — some two years after it announced the initial discussion paper. The original offered a vision for crypto that many in the industry claimed would doom the UK’s digital asset space.
The BOE said that it received comments and feedback from a broad range of 46 different stakeholders, including “banks, non-bank payment service providers, payment system operators, trade associations, academia, and individuals.”
The UK’s central bank may have scrapped some more hardline requirements, but some in the industry believe that it isn’t enough. Tom Rhodes, chief legal officer at UK-based stablecoin issuer Agant, said the bank remains “disproportionately cautious and restrictive.”
Bank of England still cautious on stablecoins
The new iteration presents a number of improvements on the 2023 version, Rhodes told Cointelegraph.
“The latest proposals do include some innovative features, such as direct BOE liquidity lines and the ability to repo reserves for liquidity purposes.”
He said that, as it concerns the UK market, “these proposals can be further explored and potentially expanded to create a more competitive backing asset regime, without compromising on stability.”
But despite the “welcome progress in the BOE’s sentiment towards stablecoins,” it has been “unusually vocal about the perceived risks of stablecoins,” said Rhodes.
One of the more controversial restrictions in the paper was limits on what the BOE called a “systemic retail stablecoin.” In the paper, this is defined as a stablecoin that is “widely used by individuals to make everyday payments such as for shopping and receiving salaries.”
The central bank wants to see limits of 20,000 pounds for individuals and 10 million pounds for businesses that accept it as a form of payment. This is an increase from the initial proposal, but the idea of limits on how much crypto you can hold didn’t sit well with some.
Crypto influencer Aleksandra Huk wrote, “Bank of England wants to cap stablecoin holdings at £20,000. Who gave them the right to tell us what to buy, where to store our money and how much we can have? […] Honestly, this is the best advert ever for privacy coins and for leaving the UK.”
Related: UK crypto hopes stall, but ‘encouraging signs’ are there
There are a few caveats to the suggested rule. Geoff Richards, head of community at the Ontology Network, noted, “The proposal applies only to sterling-denominated stablecoins used in UK payment systems that could become ‘systemic.’ Not USDT, not USDC, not random DeFi tokens.”
Ian Taylor, board member of crypto industry advocacy group CryptoUK, told Cointelegraph that he understands the central bank’s more cautious approach, at least as it applies to the stablecoin limits:
“The Bank of England has a mandate to protect against financial stability. And that financial stability is connected to the banking system. So insofar as banks take deposits and they issue loans against those deposits […] creates credit, this is an economic benefit to any economy that we have.”
The BOE is rightfully worried that taking deposits out of banks would reduce their ability to lend, affecting financial stability. “So, that’s why they want to baby-step this.”
Rhodes said that the “vast majority” of UK stablecoins will not fall under the regime anyway, at least not as stated in the paper. He noted that Mastercard was only recognized as a systemically important payment system in 2021 and that non-systemic stablecoins will be regulated under the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) ruleset, “which is less restrictive.”
Still work to be done as UK opens up to crypto
Access to central bank liquidity and deposit accounts at the BOE was a welcome update for stablecoin issuers. But crypto industry representatives believe that there is still room for improvement in the central bank’s plan.
Regarding the stablecoin caps, “The systemic thresholds remain uncertain,” said Rhodes. He said it would be helpful to have clarification from His Majesty’s Treasury when an issuer has reached sufficient scale to “pose a risk to the UK economy as a whole, before they will recognize the issuer as systemic.”
Taylor also noted the difficulty of enforcing these stablecoin caps. If the government is licensing an issuer, then they’re the ones “responsible for monitoring each individual client or customer, whether wholesale, corporate or retail, as to how many stablecoins they’ve given them.”
The problem is that many people get their stablecoins on secondary markets or a “host of different sources.” People can receive stablecoins as compensation at work or on an exchange or peer-to-peer transaction. “So, the actual operational enforcement of that I question, and we’ve seen no detail in regards to that.”
Overall, “clarity and speed” will make the UK stablecoin ecosystem more competitive, said Arvin Abraham, partner at Goodwin Procter. He told Cointelegraph that regulators need to give issuers “a clean runway and predictable timelines” to navigate the approvals process.
Speed isn’t the government’s strong suit, however.
The British government has been working on crypto regulations since 2017, when it first adopted Anti-Money Laundering and Know Your Customer requirements for crypto-related businesses like exchanges. Now, eight years later, the central bank is still developing its policies based on industry feedback.
The slow pace of progress presents a problem. According to Taylor, “We’ve been consulting on a wider framework to regulate stablecoins for almost five years, and we still haven’t gotten any actual license framework in place, which is problematic for a number of reasons,” he said.
“It doesn’t help businesses that want to launch stablecoins in the UK. They don’t have a clear roadmap of how to do that,” he said, “which in turn forces them to move offshore to jurisdictions where there are other regulatory frameworks already live.”
This is for a number of reasons, Taylor explained, including consecutive changes in government, as well as a lack of “real champions in any of our key stakeholders, be that the current government, be that Treasury, be that the FCA.”
Progress on crypto regulations may be slow in the UK — slower than many in the industry would like — but for Abraham, “The Bank is being pragmatic and fair. The overriding message is that innovation is welcome, but if you want your token to function like money, you need money-grade controls.”
Magazine: 2026 is the year of pragmatic privacy in crypto: Canton, Zcash and more
The debut of the Canary Capital XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) is signaling renewed demand for altcoins, after the fund posted the strongest first-day performance of the more than 900 ETFs launched in 2025.
Canary Capital’s XRP (XRP) ETF closed its first day with $58 million in trading volume, marking the most successful ETF debut of 2025 among both crypto and traditional ETFs, said Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas in a Thursday X post.
The new fund garnered over $250 million in inflows during its first trading day, surpassing the recent inflows of all other crypto ETFs.
Part of the reason behind the successful launch was the ETF’s in-kind creation model, according to ETF analyst Nate Geraci.
“A few people asking how it’s possible to have ‘only’ $59mil trading volume, but nearly $250mil inflows… The answer? In-kind creations, which don’t show up in trading volume,” wrote Geraci in a Thursday X post.
The in-kind redemption model enables the creation and redemption of ETF shares through the underlying asset, as opposed to cash-only transaction models. In this case, Canary Capital’s ETF shares can be exchanged for XRP tokens.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved in-kind creation and redemption for cryptocurrency ETFs on July 29, Cointelegraph reported at the time.
Smart money traders rotate into XRP longs after ETF debut
The launch of the ETF inspired a bullish rotation among the industry’s most successful traders, as tracked by returns and labeled as “smart money” traders on the crypto intelligence platform Nansen.
Related: Circle enters world’s largest financial market with onchain FX engine
Smart money traders have added $44 million worth of net long XRP positions over the past 24 hours, signaling more upside expectations for the token.
The cohort was net long on the XRP token, with a cumulative $49 million, but remained net short on the Solana (SOL) token, with $55 million worth of cumulative short positions on the decentralized exchange Hyperliquid.
Related: Metaplanet’s Bitcoin gains fall 39% as October crash pressures corporate treasuries
“XRP is holding near $2.30, showing relative stability but still feeling the effects of declining liquidity and cautious investor sentiment,” Ryan Lee, chief analyst at Bitget exchange, told Cointelegraph.
“For now, the setup looks like a healthy reset, not the end of the cycle, with both SOL and XRP well-positioned to lead the next wave once confidence snaps back.”
Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw $866 million worth of negative outflows on Thursday, their second-worst day on record, after the $1.14 billion daily outflows on Feb. 25, 2025, according to Farside Investors.
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