Tristan Thompson, the 34-year-old NBA enforcer who spent 14 seasons body-bumping in the paint, has quietly accepted that no team will call his name again. Instead of chasing a 15th training-camp invite, he is sprinting down a different court—one built on hashes instead of hardwood.

Chief Advisory Officer, AxonDAO – A Very Personal Moonshot

In June 2025 Thompson told People he had taken the post of Chief Advisory Officer at AxonDAO, a decentralized-science collective that lets patients license—or lock—their own medical data on-chain. The gig is not cosmetic: Thompson’s younger brother Amari suffers from severe epilepsy, and TT wants families like his to access global treatment trials without surrendering custody of sensitive records. “If blockchain can’t help my brother, it’s just noise,” he said.

Courtside Crypto – The Pod That Bridges Locker Rooms and Ledger Rooms

While every other player-hosted show debates pick-and-roll coverage, Thompson’s weekly podcast Courtside Crypto schools athletes on seed phrases, stablecoins and regulatory headwinds. In August he recorded an episode in the Roosevelt Room, interviewing White House Digital Asset Council executive Bo Hines. TT’s takeaway: “The next generation of ballers won’t sign max deals—they’ll negotiate smart-contract clauses that pay them in USDC if they hit 500 threes.”

Chief Digital Equity Officer, World Mobile – Ball Screens for Broadband

Days after the White House visit, Thompson was named Chief Digital Equity Officer at telecom-blockchain startup World Mobile. His mandate: deploy solar-powered relay nodes across rural Zambia, Haiti and Appalachia, then let residents buy bandwidth with tokens. He has seeded the “Community Connectivity Fund” with $3 million of his own capital and is lobbying NBA union officials to install nodes near every G-League arena.

Basketball.fun – No Token, Just Pure Hoop-Fi

Slated to go live opening night of the 2025-26 season, Basketball.fun is TT’s gamified fan-layer built on new L1 Somnia. Users mint “moment shares” that rise or fall in real time with a player’s box-score plus sentiment scraped from X and Discord—think fantasy sports married to a prediction market, but without a native platform token Thompson calls “a distraction.” Early beta testers include Donovan Mitchell and a cohort of South Korean streamers.

No Personal Coin, No Pump-and-Dump – Only Conviction

Thompson swears he will never launch $TT coin. “I already got paid in a currency people doubted—my 2016 contract,” he jokes. He regrets ignoring a teammate’s 2015 BTC pitch and now predicts bitcoin touches $150 k by New Year’s. His longer play: spend the next six months landing a full-time C-suite seat at a top-20 crypto firm, then spend the off-season (he still calls it that) onboarding the first billion users to on-chain life.

The Fourth Quarter That Never Ends

Front offices aren’t texting, but VCs are. Whether AxonDAO ships a single HIPAA-compliant block, or Basketball.fun escapes the graveyard of sports-fan tokens, is still box-score material. Yet the same league that once mocked Thompson’s “verticality” is now watching to see if the league’s most infamous screen-setter can set a screen for mainstream adoption. Tip-off is in progress; the shot clock on his second career reads 14 seasons—and counting.

Tristan Thompson, the 34-year-old NBA enforcer who spent 14 seasons body-bumping in the paint, has quietly accepted that no team will call his name again. Instead of chasing a 15th training-camp invite, he is sprinting down a different court—one built on hashes instead of hardwood.

Chief Advisory Officer, AxonDAO – A Very Personal Moonshot

In June 2025 Thompson told People he had taken the post of Chief Advisory Officer at AxonDAO, a decentralized-science collective that lets patients license—or lock—their own medical data on-chain. The gig is not cosmetic: Thompson’s younger brother Amari suffers from severe epilepsy, and TT wants families like his to access global treatment trials without surrendering custody of sensitive records. “If blockchain can’t help my brother, it’s just noise,” he said.

Courtside Crypto – The Pod That Bridges Locker Rooms and Ledger Rooms

While every other player-hosted show debates pick-and-roll coverage, Thompson’s weekly podcast Courtside Crypto schools athletes on seed phrases, stablecoins and regulatory headwinds. In August he recorded an episode in the Roosevelt Room, interviewing White House Digital Asset Council executive Bo Hines. TT’s takeaway: “The next generation of ballers won’t sign max deals—they’ll negotiate smart-contract clauses that pay them in USDC if they hit 500 threes.”

Chief Digital Equity Officer, World Mobile – Ball Screens for Broadband

Days after the White House visit, Thompson was named Chief Digital Equity Officer at telecom-blockchain startup World Mobile. His mandate: deploy solar-powered relay nodes across rural Zambia, Haiti and Appalachia, then let residents buy bandwidth with tokens. He has seeded the “Community Connectivity Fund” with $3 million of his own capital and is lobbying NBA union officials to install nodes near every G-League arena.

Basketball.fun – No Token, Just Pure Hoop-Fi

Slated to go live opening night of the 2025-26 season, Basketball.fun is TT’s gamified fan-layer built on new L1 Somnia. Users mint “moment shares” that rise or fall in real time with a player’s box-score plus sentiment scraped from X and Discord—think fantasy sports married to a prediction market, but without a native platform token Thompson calls “a distraction.” Early beta testers include Donovan Mitchell and a cohort of South Korean streamers.

No Personal Coin, No Pump-and-Dump – Only Conviction

Thompson swears he will never launch $TT coin. “I already got paid in a currency people doubted—my 2016 contract,” he jokes. He regrets ignoring a teammate’s 2015 BTC pitch and now predicts bitcoin touches $150 k by New Year’s. His longer play: spend the next six months landing a full-time C-suite seat at a top-20 crypto firm, then spend the off-season (he still calls it that) onboarding the first billion users to on-chain life.

The Fourth Quarter That Never Ends

Front offices aren’t texting, but VCs are. Whether AxonDAO ships a single HIPAA-compliant block, or Basketball.fun escapes the graveyard of sports-fan tokens, is still box-score material. Yet the same league that once mocked Thompson’s “verticality” is now watching to see if the league’s most infamous screen-setter can set a screen for mainstream adoption. Tip-off is in progress; the shot clock on his second career reads 14 seasons—and counting.