Are you tired of memecoins yet?
Donald Trump and the First Lady each have one. Hawk Tuah girl has (had) one. And now, a Musk has one. No, not that Musk. Papa Musk, a.k.a. Elon’s dad.
Errol Musk is the latest entrant into the memecoin bonanza, officially endorsing a cryptocurrency called “Musk It,” he told me in a wide-ranging interview.
Many of these projects are short on details, instead relying on their buzzy names to drive up hype, and Musk It is no exception. Errol and his business partner, a tech consultant named Nathan Browne, told me that they’re using the proceeds from the token’s sale (which they hope will raise anywhere from $150 million to $200 million) to fund a new, for-profit think tank founded by Errol called the Musk Institute.
They declined to provide substantial information on the institute, its launch, or specific projects it’ll work on, beyond the goal of furthering scientific advancement. (“We need to go beyond rockets,” Errol told me.)
If you read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon from late 2023, you’ll probably recognize Errol as the almost antagonist figure of the tome: “A charismatic fantasist who to this day bedevils Elon,” in Isaacson’s words. He details Errol’s alleged verbal abuse of his sons, as well as physical abuse of Elon’s mother, Maye, which she has spoken publicly about. Errol vehemently denied the claims, calling the book “absolute rubbish.”
According to Isaacson, Elon and his brother, Kimbal, largely cut off communication with their father after he impregnated his stepdaughter, Jana. Errol told me that he has been in more recent communication with Elon and Kimbal, though they of course did not respond to a request for comment. (At least we’re not getting the poop emoji anymore from X comms.) At the very least, Errol said that his sons are not involved in the memecoin or the planned think tank.
So what does this all mean? I wish I had something profound to say. Memecoins are a new vehicle for rapid financialization with few consequences, except for the investors who will often lose their shirts. They are, by design, not meant to serve as investments into a broader enterprise (lest they be confused for securities, if that matters anymore). And yet, they seem to be a new, even mainstream, feature of our gambling economy, like sports betting and prediction markets.
After my article about Errol published on Thursday, the Musk It token—perhaps inevitably—spiked over 2,000%, according to CoinMarketCap. My X DMs and Signal filled with questions from anonymous degen traders asking if it was real. Within an hour, the price crashed back down.
I tried to push Errol on whether it was irresponsible to use his famous last name, which will inevitably be associated with his son, to raise money through a memecoin. “I’m the head of the family,” he told me. “It really started with me in our family—I’ve been ‘Musking It’ for years.”
You can read my full article here.
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See you Monday,
Leo Schwartz
X: @leomschwartz
Email: leo.schwartz@fortune.com
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