E192: Tristan Thompson: Why This NBA Champion Is Betting on Crypto (and why you should too)

Tristan Thompson treats Bitcoin as long-term savings, calling it digital gold and a kind of digital 401(k); he says it represents about 10–15% of his personal wealth and believes it will reach $1 million. He also owns physical gold and sees Bitcoin as serving a similar store-of-value role, while requiring care to keep ledger-based holdings secure. Pointing to weaknesses exposed by the 2008 crisis and similarities he sees in today’s bond market, he favors accumulating and holding Bitcoin, but cautions against concentrating everything in one asset and favors exposure across sectors.

His crypto holdings include Bitcoin and SOL, and he uses Solana for liquidity-pool pairs. He finds Solana products useful for introducing retail users to staking and earning APY, and says missing an early investment in a protocol that was later acquired made him more intent on pursuing a wider range of opportunities. He also holds spot Zcash, which he views as a strong privacy narrative but a distinct category from Bitcoin, despite its “privacy Bitcoin” label.

Thompson says crypto investors should guard against greed, take profits, and risk only what they can afford to lose. He recalled being up multiple seven figures on a meme coin but exiting with about one-third of that gain, saying the desire to prove oneself right can make it hard to sell. He has also been badly hurt by leverage, including a six-figure loss on one trade; he says he later made the money back and is now in the green. He began leverage trading about three years ago and says he has made six figures trading, including on Zcash and HYPE longs. His broader approach spans spot buying, liquidity pools, leverage, angel investments, and later-stage deals.

For investors starting out, Thompson recommends beginning small and not expecting every position to return 10x or 100x. He says later-stage seed rounds may suit entry-level investors, while pre-seed, seed, and Series A or B opportunities demand a different appetite for risk; he invests across both early and later stages. He describes Poppy, a health soda company he backed at pre-seed, as one of his best investments and estimated that Pepsi acquired it for between $1.5 billion and $2 billion. In his view, a portfolio of 10 investments could include eight failures, with two successes covering the capital invested and more.

Thompson looks for founders who pursue ambitious goals but can recognize when to pivot, a quality he connects to adaptability in LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Stephen Curry as the game changed. He says athletes and military veterans can bring discipline, routine, and experience with adversity to company leadership, while warning that young athletes, including high-school students earning through NIL, can be targets for people seeking their money. He also wants to show younger people that success does not require an elite university degree: although school labels and alumni networks can help founders raise capital, he says he bets on committed founders rather than schools.

He is excited by AI and robotics, especially physical AI, and has invested in Prometheus. He expects warehouse robots to operate around the clock, reduce labor needs, and identify damaged goods, with people still monitoring and operating them. He argues that AI value may also accrue to software delivering real-world services, not just large language models, citing a California household-services sourcing company that had raised $40 million. As technology changes work, he expects people to become more creative and urges workers to build skills that are hard to replace; he says lived experience and human interaction give creativity a quality AI cannot replicate. Thompson limits his children’s screen time to an hour a day and plans to emphasize human interaction and outdoor play.