Key Highlights
- Errol Musk, father of Elon and Kimbal Musk, said that crypto will be the future of finance and described the traditional banking model as “finished.”
- The 79-year-old South African engineer claimed his two sons hold a combined 23,400 Bitcoins, a figure that exceeds the publicly disclosed corporate holdings of Tesla and SpaceX combined.
- Errol admitted he does not personally own any digital assets, describing himself as “old-fashioned,” but said he has met Binance Founder CZ and the Founder of Bybit.
Errol Musk, father of Tesla and SpaceX Founder Elon Musk, has declared that crypto is the future of global finance—and in the process offered a rare, headline-grabbing glimpse into the Musk family’s digital asset exposure.
In an exclusive interview with BeInCrypto, the 79-year-old South African engineer was unequivocal about where the industry is heading.
“I have no doubt that crypto will be the future of finance. The old model has run its course, it’s finished,” Errol said. “The new form of money management is clearly crypto.”
A banking system that no longer works
Errol grounded his conviction in personal experience, describing how moving money across borders through traditional banking channels has become, in his words, “practically impossible”—while crypto transfers happen instantly.
“It’s an amazing form of money movement. For example, if I’m in South Africa and I want to bring some money from America through a bank, it’s impossible. They make it so impossible through the bank. If I go to my friends in crypto, they do it immediately, no problem,” said Errol.
He added that he has met Binance Founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao and the Founder of Bybit and has personally received crypto payments that bypassed traditional banking entirely.
Despite that conviction, Errol admitted he does not hold any digital assets himself, describing himself as “old-fashioned.”
“What I know about it is small, but it’s a big thing. I am still old-fashioned. I have a bank card,” he remarked. “Altogether, I’m not an expert, but it’s clearly fascinating stuff.”
Inside the Musk family’s Bitcoin position
The more striking revelation came when Errol was asked about his sons’ crypto positions. “I know it sounds astronomical. Elon and Kimbal, my two sons, have 23,400 Bitcoins,” he said.
If accurate, the figure would place the Musk brothers among the largest individual Bitcoin holders in the world. At current prices, 23,400 BTC would be worth well over $1.6 billion.
The number is also notable because it exceeds the publicly disclosed corporate holdings of Elon Musk’s two largest companies combined. According to BitcoinTreasuries data, Tesla holds 11,509 BTC—ranking 12th among the largest publicly traded Bitcoin holders—while SpaceX holds an additional 8,285 BTC. That brings Tesla’s and SpaceX’s combined corporate holdings to 19,794 BTC, roughly 3,600 short of Errol’s figure.
The gap suggests Errol may be including personal Bitcoin held by Elon and Kimbal outside their corporate balance sheets, though neither has publicly disclosed individual holdings of that scale. Neither Tesla, SpaceX, nor Kimbal Musk has commented on the claim.
A Solana detour
The family has also transacted in other tokens. Errol revealed that the family once received payment in Solana (SOL), which he said was worth “a little more than a million rubles” at the time—an unusual currency reference for a South African resident and likely a translation artifact from the interview.
“It was strange for me to receive that payment in crypto. We received Solana back then, it was worth much more, and we got out at the peak,” he said.
The anecdote, if accurate, suggests the Musk family—or at least those around it—has been actively transacting in altcoins, not merely holding Bitcoin as a long-term treasury asset.
The Musk family’s crypto track record
Elon Musk himself has never launched an official token but has repeatedly moved markets with public comments on Dogecoin, and Tesla’s 2021 Bitcoin purchase remains one of the most widely cited corporate crypto moves in history. His father, by contrast, has taken a more direct commercial route—lending his name to the Musk It memecoin in early 2025, a project tied to a planned for-profit think tank called the Musk Institute.
That project drew criticism from parts of the industry for its lack of published tokenomics and its reliance on the Musk family name without Elon’s involvement. Errol’s latest comments are likely to revive scrutiny of how the family’s various crypto associations fit together—particularly as Elon’s platform X prepares to roll out in-app crypto and stock trading, and as the broader celebrity-memecoin category continues to face regulatory heat in Washington.
What it means
For an industry that has spent the past year trying to graduate from speculation into genuine financial infrastructure, endorsements from public figures like Errol Musk cut both ways. On one hand, his framing—that banking has failed at the basic job of cross-border money movement—echoes exactly the value proposition crypto advocates have been pushing for over a decade.
On the other hand, Errol’s own admission that he does not hold any digital assets, combined with his past association with the Musk It memecoin, meaning his endorsement is likely to land differently with institutional readers than with the retail crowd.
What is harder to dismiss is the 23,400 BTC figure—a number that, if verified, would reshape the public understanding of just how much Bitcoin the Musk family actually controls.
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