This is why most cryptos have failed in 2025 and will likely get worse.
The crypto market 2025 experienced an unprecedented wave of projects, with more than 11.6 million tokens dropped in one year, according to new data from CoinGecko.
This figure represents 86.3% of all cryptocurrency crashes since 2021, making 2025 the most devastating for token survival in the history of the industry.
Token creation has exploded-survival has failed, CoinGecko report shows
CoinGecko's findings highlight a structural breakdown in the token economy, with the creation of project mines, meme coin saturation, and extreme market volatility.
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In total, 53.2% of all cryptocurrencies monitored on GeckoTerminal are now inactive. Most of the failures have been accumulated in the last two years.
In the year Between 2021 and 2025, the number of listed cryptocurrency projects rose from 428,383 to nearly 20.2 million. While the rapid growth has resulted in increased access to token devices, it has led to high market saturation.
An annual breakdown of failures shows the magnitude of the change. In 2021, only 2,584 tokens failed. This number increases to 213,075 in 2022 and 245,049 in 2023.
The situation worsened significantly in 2024 when 1,382,010 tokens fell. However, 2025 eclipsed all previous years, with 11,564,909 failed tokens.
Together, 2024 and 2025 accounted for more than 96% of all crypto token failures since 2021, reflecting how recent market conditions have fundamentally changed token survival.
CoinGecko's methodology focused only on cryptocurrencies that had recorded at least one trade and were listed on GeckoTerminal before becoming inactive.
Tokens with zero trading activity are excluded, only certified Pump.fun tokens are included, which strengthens the integrity of the dataset.
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Q4 2025 marks the breaking point between meme coin saturation and “Crime Szn” woes.
The decline increased dramatically in the last months of the year. Q4 2025 alone saw 7.7 million token failures, representing 34.9% of the failures recorded over the five years.
This increase coincided with the liquidity crash on October 10, in which $19 billion of leveraged positions were wiped out in 24 hours, the largest single-day transfer event in crypto history.
The shock exposed vulnerabilities in thin brands, including:
Lack of sufficient liquidity or planned market participants to survive excessive volatility.
CoinGecko notes that the sharp drop in survival is particularly noticeable in the meme coin sector, which has grown rapidly over the years.
The rise of easy-to-use launchpads has played a central role in the wave of failures. Platforms like Pump.fun have greatly reduced technical barriers, allowing anyone to start tokenizing in minutes.
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While this experiment was democratic, it flooded the market with low-effort projects with no long-term viability.
Andrey Grachev, CEO of DWF Labs, described the environment as a season of crime, pointing to systemic pressures facing both founders and investors.
His comments reflect a broader consolidation in crypto markets that has seen capital flow into bitcoin, established assets and short-term speculative trading. This leaves new projects struggling to attract sustainable liquidity.
In the year The focus on failures in 2025 has raised concerns about the long-term health of token innovation practices.
While innovation remains a cornerstone of the crypto market, data suggests that the market's ability to attract new projects is overstated.
As millions of tokens disappear, retail confidence will continue to erode, reducing available liquidity and raising the stakes for future startups.
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Why the Token Fall Cycle Could Extend to 2026
Meanwhile, the forces that drove crypto's collapse in 2025 show little sign of abating. Token creation remains frictionless, retail revenue is fragmented, and market attention continues to focus on Bitcoin, blue-chip assets, and short-term speculative businesses.
Data from CoinGecko shows that token supply has grown faster than the market's capacity. With around 20.2 million projects listed by the end of 2025, a somewhat more launch pad-specific risk of issuance will increase the rate of decline in 2026. This is especially true if demand and liquidity fail to recover.
Market stress events also remain a key vulnerability. The October 10 liquidity crisis, which wiped out $19 billion in leveraged positions in 24 hours, showed how quickly systemic shocks can ripple through traded assets.
Tokens with deep illiquidity or committed user bases were disproportionately affected, suggesting that similar parts of the exchange could cause further mass failures.
Andrey Grachev, managing partner of DWF Labs, warned that the current environment is structurally hostile to new projects, describing the ongoing “liquidity wars” across crypto markets.
As retail capital dwindles and competition intensifies, new tokens face obstacles to survival. Unless changes are made to initiate incentives, change transparency levels or investor education, the market risks repeating the same cycle: rapid exit, short speculation and eventual collapse.
Industry participants argue that this cleanup could ultimately strengthen crypto by eliminating weak projects, but the data suggests that the correction is far from over.
If tokenization continues to grow in liquidity, 2026 may see fewer startups, but not necessarily fewer failures.
