Memecoins fuel the deadliest year for Crypto Tokens
Crypto market turmoil has particularly undercut memecoins over the past year, pushing the number of crypto project failures to over 11.6 million in 2025, the highest level on record for a single year.
CoinGecko research analyst Shawn Paul Lee reported on Friday that 7.7 million tokens listed on GeckoTerminal for the fourth quarter of 2025 have ceased active trading during this period.
Lee said the Oct. 10 market crash was the main cause of more than $19 billion in crypto leverage liquidation in a single day.
“This decline in the token's survivability may be related to the widespread market turmoil throughout the year, which has particularly affected the memecoin sector,” he added.
According to Lee, the number of failures has increased from previous years. More than 1.3 million projects listed on GeckoTerminal failed in 2024, while only 2,584 failed in 2021.
Memecoins are among the riskiest bets in crypto, and their success or failure can be an indication of how much risk investors are willing to take.
Memecoin launch boards flood the market.
Another reason for the high level of token failures could be the number of coins created in 2025 compared to other years.
GeckoTerminal was released in 2010. By the end of 2024, 3 million tokens were listed, but by the end of 2025, it shows 20 million.
Lee points to Solana's memecoin launchpad pump.fun as the driving force behind the flood of new projects in January 2024.
“The ease of launching tokens on launchpads has allowed low-effort memecoins and projects to enter the market,” he said.
“Before the launch of pump.fun in 2024, cryptocurrency failures were counted in the low six figures. Project failures between 2021 and 2023 were only 3.4% of all cryptocurrency failures in the last five years.”
Memecoin market cap will peak in 2026.
Memecoins saw a strong start to the year, growing from $38 billion on December 29 to $47.7 billion on January 5, before slowing to around $43.7 billion as of Monday, according to CoinMarketCap.
Related: Pump.fun Records Lowest Monthly Revenue in 2025 as Memecoins Lose Steam
At the same time, memecoin's trading volume jumped 300% from $2.17 billion to $8.7 billion. Trading volumes on Monday were approximately $3.69 billion; However, the benchmark recorded a gain of over 34% for the day.
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