A Polymarket account bearing the name of George Cottrell, the convicted fraudster who has bankrolled Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, took in nearly $9 million in cryptocurrency from unidentified wallets days before the 2024 US presidential election, generating a $4.46 million profit that flowed straight back out to opaque destinations.
A fresh investigation by the Financial Times has put the blockchain trail of one of British politics’ most controversial financiers back under the microscope, raising pointed questions about whether anonymous crypto liquidity ultimately paid for Farage’s travel, security, and lodging.
The GCottrell93 Wallet Trail
According to the report, the Polymarket account registered as “GCottrell93” received roughly $8.8 million in stablecoins across late October 2024. The funds arrived from two distinct sources:
- $7 million from OKX, transferred in five tranches of either $1 million or $2 million each.
- $1.83 million from a wallet previously funded by ChangeNOW, another crypto exchange.
Each tranche was almost immediately deployed into Polymarket positions backing Donald Trump to win the US presidency. After Trump’s victory on November 5, 2024, the account cashed out with a reported $4.46 million profit on the trade, mirroring a broader wave of crypto whales betting big on a Trump win in the closing weeks of the race.
The exit path mirrored the entry. Approximately $13 million was routed back to OKX across seven tranches, while a further $282,000 was sent to a ChangeNOW wallet, leaving the beneficial ownership of both the deposits and the winnings unclear.
Who Funded the Bets?
The core question is one that blockchain analysts, election watchdogs, and UK financial regulators are now being pushed to answer: whose money was actually being wagered?
Cottrell declined to answer questions about the beneficial owner of the wallet, whether any third party had an economic interest in the bets or winnings, or whether any of the money was used, directly or indirectly, to support Farage or Reform UK. His lawyers said he would not comment on his financial affairs or on specific transactions, and that this did not mean he accepted the FT’s assertions. Reform UK did not respond to any request for comment.
The timing has become the story’s pressure point. Over the course of 2024, Cottrell financed Farage’s staff, security, transport, accommodation, and travel. Farage has publicly acknowledged that Cottrell allowed him to stay in a five-storey house rented near Buckingham Palace, just minutes from Reform’s Millbank headquarters, at a reported rent of £5,480 per week.
Weeks after the Trump bets were cashed in, on December 14, 2024, Cottrell paid for Farage to fly to Palm Beach for a three-day trip during which the Reform leader met Elon Musk and discussed a potential donation to the party. That trip was declared in Farage’s parliamentary register of financial interests at £15,300.
The ZachXBT Link and the “Posh George” Trades
The GCottrell93 wallet was not a discovery. In October 2025, on-chain investigator ZachXBT publicly identified the address as belonging to Cottrell with “high confidence” after the wallet resurfaced to place bets on the length of a handshake between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Screenshots shared at the time showed bids totalling more than 200,000 shares priced between 40 and 43 cents, representing a wager of roughly $80,000 to $86,000 that the Trump-Xi handshake would last between six and ten seconds. The bet ultimately settled against him.
Cottrell, nicknamed “Posh George” in British political circles, had a rough 2026 on the same account. The 32-year-old lost approximately $655,000 incorrectly betting on when the US would strike Iran, including a single $550,000 wipeout on a “No” position against a strike by February 28, 2026. He also dropped roughly $125,000 on a bet that Sir Keir Starmer would be out as UK Prime Minister by the same date.
Even after those hits, the account has cleared roughly $3.4 million in net profits across 23 predictions, the bulk of that still coming from the 2024 Trump election trade.
As of the FT’s reporting, the wallet holds around $126,000 in stablecoins and $63,000 in open Polymarket positions, with its largest live bet a $61,000 wager on JD Vance to win the 2028 Republican presidential nomination.
OKX: The Common Node
Both the inflows and outflows point back to OKX, a fact that carries its own regulatory weight in 2026.
OKX’s operator, Aux Cayes FinTech Co. Ltd, pleaded guilty in February 2025 to serving US customers without a money transmitter license and violating anti-money laundering laws, agreeing to pay more than $500 million in penalties, including a $420.3 million forfeiture and an $84.4 million criminal fine. Prosecutors said OKX had been used to facilitate over $5 billion worth of suspicious transactions and criminal proceeds during the relevant period.
While the OKX case is unrelated to Cottrell’s activity on the platform, the AML history of the exchange chosen to receive the majority of the Trump-bet payout adds another layer of scrutiny to the money’s onward journey.
Cottrell’s Background: Wire Fraud, Aristocracy, Betting Syndicates
Cottrell’s financial firepower has long attracted questions given his declared background. He was arrested in 2016 while attending the Republican National Convention in Chicago alongside Farage.
US prosecutors charged him with conspiracy to commit money laundering, wire fraud, blackmail, and extortion after meetings with undercover federal agents in Las Vegas. Following a plea agreement, he pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud and served eight months in prison.
Legal documents cited by the FT show his father’s estate was valued at only £1.5 million in 2023, a figure sharply out of step with the nine-figure sums moving through the GCottrell93 wallet.
He has also been named in a UK High Court claim that alleged betting accounts in his name had been used by other gamblers to place wagers worth millions of dollars, with profits split between him and others. The claim described the setup as a commercial arrangement rather than an illegal one, and Cottrell is not a party to it.
Court filings previously named him as part of a professional betting syndicate linked to Brighton and Hove Albion owner Tony Bloom, tied to the analytics firm Starlizard, which reportedly generated hundreds of millions of dollars in winnings.
Adding to the irony, Cottrell recently published a book titled “How To Launder Money: A guide for law enforcement, prosecutors and policymakers,” whose launch was attended by Farage and senior Reform UK figures.
The Wider Reform UK Crypto Web
The story lands at a moment when the party has been building an unusually close relationship with the crypto industry, drawing tens of millions from crypto billionaire donors including Tether shareholder Christopher Harborne and BitMEX Co-Founder Ben Delo. In 2025, Cottrell’s mother, aristocrat Fiona Cottrell, also emerged as one of Reform UK’s largest donors.
The mounting scrutiny has already reshaped Farage’s political career. Earlier this month, Farage resigned his Clacton parliamentary seat amid revelations about a £5 million undeclared personal gift from Harborne, with the UK parliamentary standards commissioner already investigating him over alleged crypto lobbying links to a major donor. In the aftermath, Labour MPs have moved to make the UK’s moratorium on crypto political donations permanent, pointing directly to Reform’s fundraising as the reason.
What Comes Next
The FT’s findings do not, on their own, prove wrongdoing. But they map a live blockchain question onto a live political one: whether one of Britain’s most well-known political operators has been financed, in part, through unattributed crypto flows into a prediction market wallet.
For now, the money trail is what the public has. Two anonymous sources on one side of the trade, two anonymous destinations on the other, and a Reform leader who lived, travelled, and campaigned on the goodwill of the man whose name sat on the account in between.
This is a developing story. Any updates on regulatory action by the UK Electoral Commission, the CFTC, or law enforcement will be reported as they emerge.
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