Elon Musk’s dad is promoting a memecoin that capitalizes on the family name to raise upto $200 million for various engineering projects, despite the father-son duo apparently being estranged.

Errol Musk, alongside business partner Nathan Browne, will officially back the “MUSK IT” token with the ambitious goal of establishing the Musk Institute, a new for-profit think tank that Errol aims to spearhead, per Fortune.

The Musk Institute plans to “go beyond rockets” and build flying vehicles and ot

Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Kazuo Ueda said Friday the central bank must maintain an accommodative monetary policy to support economic growth and ensure the underlying inflation gradually moves to the 2% target.

Ueda told the Parliament that the recent increase in the consumer price index above the 2% target has been led by cost-push factors such as elevated food and fuel prices that will likely dissipate.

The comments come a week after the bank raised the benchmark borrowing cost to 0.5%, th

So close yet so far – that's the story for bitcoin (BTC) this Friday morning, as its price rally has stalled just shy of record highs amidst a continued rally in gold (XAU), a traditional risk asset, and crypto tokens associated with it.

BTC, the leading cryptocurrency by market value, changed hands near $104,400 at press time. Bitcoin prices are just 4.7% short of setting a new lifetime high, according to CoinDesk data.

President Trump's reiteration of the tariffs threat looks to have clipped

The parents of prisoned crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried are reportedly exploring how to secure a presidential pardon from President Donald Trump for their son, according to a Bloomberg report.

Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, both professors at Stanford Law School and part of FTX’s inner circle, are reportedly engaging with individuals connected to Trump's inner circle, according to the report.

In recent weeks SBF's parents have tried to engage with the Trump administration to discuss pote

Crypto fund behemoth Grayscale Investments has filed an application with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to convert its XRP Trust into an exchange-traded fund (ETF), which will listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

The existing product operates as a Delaware statutory trust, managing over $16 million XRP as of Friday. The proposed ETF would continue to hold XRP as its primary asset and track its performance on a price return basis, adjusted for operational fees, providing i

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved another joint bitcoin and ether exchange-traded fund (ETF) Thursday, letting investors gain exposure to the two digital assets in one regulated financial product.

The SEC announced it had granted accelerated approval to Bitwise's Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF, just over a month after approving similar products filed by Hashdex and Franklin Templeton. Hashdex's Crypto Index ETF gives investors exposure to a basket of different cryptocurrencies, whi

San Salvador — Tether, the crypto company behind the largest stablecoin, is introducing its $140 billion USDT token to Bitcoin — the blockchain that underpins the largest and oldest cryptocurrency — and Bitcoin-based scaling service Lightning Network, the company said on Thursday. Announced at the Plan B conference in San Salvador, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said that bringing USDT to Bitcoin and Lightning aims to offer "practical solutions for remittances, payments, and other financial applicatio

Memecoin generator Pump.fun was hit with another proposed class action lawsuit on Thursday, accusing the company and its executives of raking in nearly $500 million in fees while violating U.S. securities laws.

The suit, filed in the Southern District of New York (SDNY), hinges on the crypto industry’s biggest lingering question — when is a token a security? Though the suit alleges that every token created using Pump.fun’s platform is a security, and thus subject to U.S. securities laws, that’s

Last week, through Executive Order, President Trump took a significant step toward reshaping the future of digital assets by establishing a Crypto Council led by investor and entrepreneur David Sacks. This Executive Order, coupled with the recent reversal of SAB 121 – an ill-conceived policy that made it prohibitively difficult for banks to custody crypto assets – demonstrates that the new administration is serious about removing barriers to crypto adoption.

This council represents a golden opp

Could Bitcoin (BTC) soon find its way on to the balance sheet of a European central bank?

That possibility took at least a small step forward on Thursday after the board of the Czech National Bank (CNB) approved a proposal to consider investing reserves in other assets.

Put forth by the central bank Governor Aleš Michl, the proposal was to study investing the bank's reserves in "additional asset classes." In an interview with the FT earlier this week, though, Michl had made clear his interest

In today’s issue, Miguel Kudry from L1 Advisors breaks down direct ownership of cryptocurrency vs. exchange-traded and wrapped funds and how they are expected to evolve through 2025.

Then, Crews Enochs from Index Coop answers questions on the topic in Ask and Expert.

– Sarah Morton

You’re reading Crypto for Advisors, CoinDesk’s weekly newsletter that unpacks digital assets for financial advisors. Subscribe here to get it every Thursday.

The Lines Between Spot Crypto ETFs and Direct Ownership

The telecommunications industry stands at a critical juncture. As global data consumption skyrockets, traditional telecom operators face a perfect storm of challenges: stagnant subscriber growth, costly infrastructure maintenance and an insatiable demand for bandwidth. This capacity crunch is not just a problem for carriers; it's a looming crisis for consumers who increasingly rely on seamless connectivity in their daily lives.

The telecom squeeze

In 2024, AT&T projected $4.7 billion in site l

This week, in a Washington Post op-ed, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev called for a new approach to capital markets in the United States. He suggested a number of policies – modernizing accredited investor standards is an old favorite among finance wonks – but one stood out. “[T]here needs to exist a security token registration regime, allowing companies to create token offerings that are open to U.S. investors.” Here, Tenev seizes upon the skeleton key to unlock cryptocurrency’s full potential.

Here'

Elastos, a project looking to turn Bitcoin into a more fruitful base for decentralized finance (DeFi), has raised $20 million towards that goal.

Elastos, a decentralized infrastructure provider, aims to scale its Bitcoin DeFi protocol BeL2 as a utility layer for the world's original blockchain.

The firm has raised $20 million from private investment company Rollman Management, with which it plans to expand its merge-mined ELA token as a Bitcoin reserve asset, Elastos told CoinDesk in an email

CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.

The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 3829.35, up 1.8% (+68.29) since 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday.

Twenty of 20 assets are trading higher.

Leaders: LTC (+16.7%) and DOT (+4.8%).

Laggards: XRP (+0.1%) and XLM (+0.5%).

The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.

Apollo, an investment firm with over $730 billion in assets under management, is offering investors a new tokenized private credit fund with the help of security token specialist Securitize.

Accessed via the Apollo Diversified Credit Securitize Fund (ACRED) feeder fund, the token is the first public on-chain offering for accredited investors of Apollo and also the first integration for Securitize with the Solana blockchain, as well as with Ink, a layer-2 network built by the Kraken crypto excha

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

The crypto market is trading positively with the Fed risk event out of the way, focusing on positives such as the crypto-friendly president in the White House, the renewed upswing in Tether's market, and the bullish Chinese New Year effect.

Among cryptocurrencies with $5 billion-plus market valuations, the standout performer is litecoin (LTC), the silver to bitcoin's gold, which has jumped more than 11% since the early Asian hours comp

Institution-focused digital asset technology and trading firm BlockFills is collaborating with CoinDesk Indices to launch options tied to the CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20).

The CoinDesk 20 Index, which debuted a year ago, measures the performance of leading digital assets, catering to institutional demand for diverse tradable products beyond bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH). The availability of options means traders can speculate on volatility and time in addition to price direction, bringing professio

Staunch crypto skeptic and disgraced former U.S. Senator Bob Menendez was sentenced to 11 years in prison on Wednesday on charges of bribery and acting as an agent for Egypt, the Associated Press reported.

Menendez was a Democrat from New Jersey and famous for taking shots at crypto. He once called bitcoin (BTC) an "ideal choice for criminals" and also opposed El Salvador's acceptance of BTC.

“You were successful, powerful, you stood at the apex of our political system,” District Judge Sidney

The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, Norway’s Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), has amassed $356.7 million in indirect bitcoin (BTC) exposure, according to K33 Research. At the end of 2024, the fund indirectly held 3,821 BTC, reflecting a 153% year-over-year increase from 1,507 BTC, according to K33. The data highlight the fund’s evolving indirect bitcoin exposure, growing from just 796 BTC in in 2020.

NBIM also maintains stakes in a number of crypto-related public companies. As o