Tristan Thompson and Celebrities Drive New Wave of Crypto Engagement in 2025
In 2025, celebrities and athletes continue to significantly influence the cryptocurrency landscape, with notable figures like Tristan Thompson pivoting toward crypto investing, consulting, and brand ambassadorship. Thompson, a Canadian-born athlete who became a U.S. citizen in 2020, hosts the podcast Courtside Crypto and has announced plans for a crypto startup called Basketball.fun in early 2026. This project aims to merge sports and crypto by minting a meme coin for every NBA player and integrating a prediction-market component to determine player coin value, potentially disrupting traditional sports viewing experiences.
Thompson's involvement extends beyond entrepreneurship, having attended a Nasdaq event in September 2025 celebrating a nationalist Bitcoin mining IPO alongside Eric Trump. His political stance aligns with former President Donald Trump, who in 2025 reversed Biden-era crypto policies, launched his own $Trump token, and promoted a September $WLFI token launch projected to increase the Trump family's net worth by up to $5 billion. The Genius Act, passed that year, legalizes blockchain products amid White House denials of any conflicts of interest.
Other celebrities engaged in the crypto space include Lamar Odom, who launched a crypto coin in May 2025 to support addiction recovery initiatives. Similarly, Mike Tyson acts as a spokesperson for the crypto platform Naga. Iggy Azalea serves as the spokesperson for the $MOTHER token and is the creative director of Thrust, a platform specializing in celebrity meme coins. Thrust’s first meme coin, N3on, was launched in 2025 with Megan Fox anticipated as the next celebrity to join.
Thrust incorporates safeguards, such as limits on token issuer sales, to mitigate pump-and-dump risks. Despite this, $MOTHER has faced insider trading allegations; Azalea denies these claims and states she has no control over token holders. The celebrity crypto boom traces back to 2021, including high-profile promotions such as Matt Damon’s. However, following the 2022 FTX collapse, several celebrities, like Tom Brady, Shohei Ohtani, Steph Curry, Shaquille O’Neal, Naomi Osaka, Cristiano Ronaldo, Floyd Mayweather, and Kim Kardashian, faced lawsuits related to crypto endorsements. Kardashian notably settled with the SEC in 2022 for promoting EthereumMax.
Industry analysts observe that while celebrity influence in crypto remains significant, the community is increasingly skeptical. Current investment trends in 2025 favor meme coins over traditional endorsements, with crypto investment described as a coordination game susceptible to fluctuations driven by celebrity-backed demand. Amidst this evolving landscape, Thompson's Basketball.fun project exemplifies innovation at the intersection of sports, media, and cryptocurrency.
