Nigel Farage and the Kwasi Kwarteng Stack sham raising another two million quid – Nigel is financially raping his own followers

I put this article outside a paywall as a service to Reform UK voters – your leader is leading you up the financial garden path and it is you who will pay for this with your own hard cash. I am no swivel eyed Remoaner. My grandfather, Sir John Winnifrith, spoke publicly in the 1975 Referendum arguing we should leave the EEC. My uncle, godfather and mentor Christopher Booker was dubbed “the grandfather of Euroscepticism” by Farage himself.  Euroscepticism is hardwired into my DNA and, until now, I would almost certainly have voted Reform in May. But Farage is behaving like a rotter.

A failed bitcoin investment company called Stack BTC (STAK) was reborn in late January 2026 with a new business plan of er…being a bitcoin investment company. A new name accompanied a new management team lead by Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor for 43 days under Liz Truss. It is thanks to folks like Kwasi that the Tory brand is so tarnished. Kwasi and his chums put in cash at 1p per share but with some low grade hyping the illiquid shares climbed and by 25 February Stack was able to raise c£2 million at 5p per share with Farage then investing another two hundred thousand quid on 9 March also at 5p.

Bear in mind that although Stack says it wants to start cash generative real businesses right now it has none just a PLC which will be costing it at least £250,000 a year to run. So its only business is buying bitcoin and hoping that it will go up – exactly the same strategy it had under the last management team!.

Now Reform supporters may be boondoggled by Farage’s claim that bitcoin will go through the roof. He was consistent in that view even last year when bitcoin reached $126,000. Today it is $74,000. Farage is a believer.

But what are termed “bitcoin in treasury” companies like Stack are nothing new. This website has covered them before in a lot of detail. Check out our coverage, for instance, of Smarter Web Company shares in which went from 2.5p to 660p but then all the way down to today’s c34p. Or London Bitcoin Company (BTC) whose shares went from, 2.5p to 56p and are now back at 2.2p. Ot Satsuma which went from almost nothing to 10p and which is now down to 0.2p with investors losing tens of millions of pounds. This is not ancient history it all happened within the last year!

The modus operandi is simple. Hype the shares so that they trade at a multiple of NAV (net asset value per share) then do a placing at a big discount to the prevailing share price so allowing City spivs to forward sell or flip shares. The placing may be at a big discount to the market price but as long as it is at a huge premium to NAV per share the placing adds to NAV per share.  Those buying shares in the market get financially raped, the City spivs who forward sell placings or churn shares post placings, palming the stock off on mug punters make out like bandits.

And early investors like Kwasi end make out like bandits as the NAV so goes to a multiple of what they paid.

But the bitcoin in treasury bubble has now burst as folks saw it for the sham that it was. None of the many companies that jumped on that bandwagon are now able to raise equity at a big premium to NAV or indeed at all.  So you can buy shares in a range of such companies at a discount to NAV. The size of the discount depends largely on the size of the underlying cashburn relative to the bitcoin held. For the largest company, Smarter Web, it is a small discount sometimes a tiny premium ( when bitcoin is rising so folks think the NAV will go up). For smaller companies ( like Stack) where PLC costs will be a material proportion of NAV the discount is now usually large.

But Stack is different for it has attracted new investors who are unaware that they are massively overpaying because they simply have a blind faith in “honest” Nigel Farage. So this is a Farage bubble and bubbles never end well.

So when Farage initially paid 5p, the NAV was just 3.2p. Farage knowingly overpaid because he knew that Reform supporters would blindly follow their dear leader and AQSE listed shares are sufficiently illiquid that it does not take much buying to see shares move sharply. Pretty soon the shares reached a point where some Faragists were paying 18.55p (six times fair value). Kwasi kept the pot boiling by announcing some bitcoin purchases and today….

BANG

The company has raised #1.8 million gross – call it £1.7 million net of brokers fees - and announced a WRAP retail offer to raise a bit more, all at 10p. Farage has bunged in another sixty grand of his “hard earned” cash. 10p would have been 3 times the pre money NAV. But most of the City spivs roped in by new broker AlbR – the firm behind the Smarter web Company spoofing – will have forward sold or flipped today. Their shares will have been palmed off on Mr. Gammon and a disgusted Colonel Mustard from Clacton. And thus as the last placees get out the shares are now just 9.5p to sell. Those Reform voters spoofed by the Farage involvement into buying at 18.55p are now sitting on losses of 50% in eight days.

The NAV per share post this placing is now c4.6p but falling every day thanks to PLC costs assuming bitcoin stays where it is. The shares should be trading at a sizeable discount to NAV given the cost base relative to net assets of c£4 million.

If Kwasi had any sense he would wind the company up now and distribute the cash to shareholders. He would have turned his 1p into 4.5p in less than two months. But he won’t.  The problems that Kwasi has are:

a) as Faragists look at their portfolio and realise they have been had and sell the shares will slide back towards NAV as always happens when bubbles burst. And that will make it harder and harder to raise new funds ( given that placings have to be at a steep discount to allow the City churners to make a turn)  in a way that is not dilutive.  So the growth story peters out.

b) If Kwasi buys a business that will generate cash, as he promises, that will be received badly. Say he needs to buy a business making £250,000 a year to cover PLC costs. That would probably set him back at least a million and a half quid. So then he would have a NAV of only 2.9 per share. And the City would value the rest of the business (PLC costs minus operating profits = 0) at more or less nothing. Okay the shares would then trade  at around NAV but that would be scant consolation for those who paid not 2.9p but 18.55p thanks to the Farage hype.

c) If Kwasi makes no acquisition then NAV is just eroded by ongoing PLC cashburn and the shares will discount that by trading at a steep discount to NAV of up to 33%- i.e. c3p per share!

Either way shareholders suckered in by the Farage hype will be rogered. Farage is no fool. He knew this would happen, he need only have looked at the boom and burst bubble of the entire sector over the past year.

To me this looks like Farage, Kwarteng and some loathsome City spivs ‘avin’ a Turkish. And they are doing so at the expense of Reform UK supporters who somehow thought their leader was different and thus hugely overpaid for shares bought in the market

If you believe in bitcoin ( and I do not) just buy bitcoin. Paying twice NAV for shares in a high cost holder of bitcoin makes no sense at all. You need the bitcoin price to soar to c$150,000 for Stack to be just fair value! If you think that is going to happen, and I do not, why not just buy bitcoin.

This is just sordid.