Ben Delo (, born 24 February 1984) is a British

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

. He is the co-founder and former executive of

BitMEX BitMEX is a cryptocurrency exchange and derivative trading platform. It is owned and operated by HDR Global Trading Limited, which is registered in the Seychelles. BitMEX offers a variety of cryptocurrency-based financial products, including per ...

. In 2022, Delo pleaded guilty to a United States

Bank Secrecy Act The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 (BSA), also known as the Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act, is a U.S. law requiring financial institutions in the United States to assist U.S. government agencies in detecting and preventing money laun ...

violation and received a 30-month probation sentence. In 2025, Delo was pardoned by President

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...

Early life and education

Delo was born in

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, situated south of Leeds and east of Manchester. The city is the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire and some of its so ...

, England. He was educated at Lord Williams's School and graduated from the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

in 2005 with a double first-class honours degree in Mathematics and Computer Science.

Career

Delo began his career as a software engineer at

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

, where he was named as an inventor on several patents granted by the

United States Patent and Trademark Office The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an List of federal agencies in the United States, agency in the United States Department of Commerce, U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark ...

and the Intellectual Property Office. He went on to develop

high-frequency trading High-frequency trading (HFT) is a type of algorithmic trading in finance characterized by high speeds, high turnover rates, and high order-to-trade ratios that leverages high-frequency financial data and electronic trading tools.Lin, Tom C. W. " ...

systems at

hedge fund A hedge fund is a Pooling (resource management), pooled investment fund that holds Market liquidity, liquid assets and that makes use of complex trader (finance), trading and risk management techniques to aim to improve investment performance and ...

s and banks such as GSA Capital and

J.P. Morgan JP may refer to: Arts and media * ''JP'' (album), 2001, by American singer Jesse Powell * ''Jp'' (magazine), an American Jeep magazine * '' Jönköpings-Posten'', a Swedish newspaper * Judas Priest, an English heavy metal band * ''Jurassic Pa ...

, dealing predominantly in

kdb+ kdb+ is a column-based relational time series database (TSDB) with in-memory (IMDB) abilities, developed and marketed by KX. The database is commonly used in high-frequency trading (HFT) to store, analyze, process, and retrieve large data set ...

/ Q. In 2014, Delo met Arthur Hayes and Sam Reed, and they co-founded BitMEX, a cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform. In 2018, ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'' reported that Delo was the United Kingdom's youngest self-made billionaire. As noted in a 2020 IPSO complaint, ''The Times'' removed a reference that he had been included in the 2018 ''

Sunday Times Rich List The ''Sunday Times Rich List'' is a list of the 1,000 wealthiest people or families resident in the United Kingdom ranked by net wealth. The list is updated annually in April and has been published as a magazine supplement by British national ...

''. In August 2022, Izabella Kaminska at ''

Bloomberg Bloomberg may refer to: People * Daniel J. Bloomberg (1905–1984), audio engineer * Georgina Bloomberg (born 1983), professional equestrian * Michael Bloomberg (born 1942), American businessman and founder of Bloomberg L.P.; politician a ...

'' described Delo as "the BitMEX co-founder most responsible for the perpetual swap’s invention."

Bank Secrecy Act violation

On 1 October 2020, the

Commodity Futures Trading Commission The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is an Independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US government created in 1974 that regulates the U.S. derivatives markets, which includes futures contract, fut ...

and the

US Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the U.S. government that oversees the domestic enforcement of federal laws and the administration of justice. It is equ ...

charged BitMEX and its co-founders, including Delo, with various violations of American law. Delo and three others were charged with violating the

by failing to implement an adequate anti-

money laundering Money laundering is the process of illegally concealing the origin of money obtained from illicit activities (often known as dirty money) such as drug trafficking, sex work, terrorism, corruption, and embezzlement, and converting the funds i ...

program. The regulators alleged that the BitMEX trading platform was required to have registered aspects of its operations in the US and had failed to do so. In March 2021, Delo traveled to the United States and surrendered himself to authorities in New York. He pleaded not guilty to the charges and was bailed on a $20 million bond before being allowed to return to the United Kingdom. On 24 February 2022, the Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced that Delo and his BitMEX cofounder had each pled guilty to one Bank Secrecy Act violation for "willfully failing to establish, implement, and maintain an anti-money laundering ('AML') program at BitMEX". Under the terms of their

plea agreement A plea bargain, also known as a plea agreement or plea deal, is a legal arrangement in criminal law where the defendant agrees to plead guilty or no contest to a charge in exchange for concessions from the prosecutor. These concessions can include ...

s, Delo and his co-founders each agreed to pay a $10 million civil monetary penalty to the CFTC. On 16 June 2022, Delo was sentenced to 30 months' probation. On 29 March 2025, Delo and the other two BitMex founders were pardoned by President

Philanthropy

In October 2018, Delo gave £5 million to his Oxford alma mater

Worcester College Worcester College ( ) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. The college was founded in 1714 by the benefaction of Sir Thomas Cookes, 2nd Baronet (1648–1701) of Norgrove, Worcestershire, whose coat of arms was ad ...

, endowing two teaching fellowships in perpetuity and becoming the youngest major donor in the College's history. At the same time, the College elected him into an Honorary Fellowship in recognition of his work in computing and his philanthropy. In April 2019, Delo signed

the Giving Pledge The Giving Pledge is a charitable campaign, founded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, to encourage wealthy people to contribute a majority (i.e. more than 50%) of their wealth to philanthropic causes. , the pledge has had 236 signatories from 28 ...

, announcing his intention to give away at least half of his wealth during his lifetime being inspired by the philosophy of

effective altruism Effective altruism (EA) is a 21st-century philosophical and social movement that advocates impartially calculating benefits and prioritizing causes to provide the greatest good. It is motivated by "using evidence and reason to figure out how to b ...

. That month, Delo also became a member of

Giving What We Can Giving What We Can (GWWC) is an effective altruism nonprofit that promotes effective giving through education, outreach, and advocacy around the 10% Pledge, which encourages members to donate at least 10% of their income to effective charities. ...

. In March 2020, Delo and ''Effective Giving'' funded a project led by the University of Oxford to survey of community-based infection of

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...

in the UK. Delo is associated with Mersenne.org and the

Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) is a collaborative project of volunteers who use freely available software to search for Mersenne prime numbers. GIMPS was founded in 1996 by George Woltman, who also wrote the Prime95 client and ...

, a collaborative internet project to find

Mersenne prime In mathematics, a Mersenne prime is a prime number that is one less than a power of two. That is, it is a prime number of the form for some integer . They are named after Marin Mersenne, a French Minim friar, who studied them in the early 1 ...

numbers. In 2023, he established the Ben Delo Commonwealth Leadership Programme, a scholarship initiative for postgraduate studies at King's College London.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Delo, Ben Living people 1984 births People educated at Lord Williams's School Alumni of Worcester College, Oxford Alumni of the University of Oxford 21st-century British philanthropists People associated with cryptocurrency People associated with effective altruism 21st-century British businesspeople Hong Kong businesspeople 20th-century Hong Kong businesspeople 21st-century Hong Kong businesspeople Financial technology company founders