The crypto market skilled an unprecedented wave of challenge collapses in 2025, with greater than 11.6 million tokens failing in a single yr, based on new knowledge from CoinGecko.
The determine represents 86.3% of all cryptocurrency failures recorded since 2021, making 2025 essentially the most harmful yr for token survivability within the trade’s historical past.
Token Creation Exploded—Survivability Collapsed, CoinGecko Report Reveals
CoinGecko’s findings spotlight a structural breakdown within the token economic system, pushed by the explosive creation of tasks, meme coin saturation, and heightened market turbulence.
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In whole, 53.2% of all cryptocurrencies tracked on GeckoTerminal at the moment are inactive. The overwhelming majority of failures have clustered up to now two years.
53.2% Cryptocurrencies Have Died Since 2021. Supply: CoinGecko
Between 2021 and 2025, the variety of listed cryptocurrency tasks surged from 428,383 to just about 20.2 million. Whereas the fast development mirrored rising accessibility to token creation instruments, it additionally led to extreme market saturation.
The annual breakdown of failures illustrates the size of the shift. In 2021, simply 2,584 tokens failed. That quantity jumped to 213,075 in 2022 and 245,049 in 2023.
The state of affairs escalated sharply in 2024, when 1,382,010 tokens collapsed. Nonetheless, 2025 dwarfed all earlier years, with 11,564,909 failed tokens.
Variety of Failed Cryptocurrencies by 12 months
2021: 2,584 tokens
2022: 213,075 tokens
2023: 245,049 tokens
2024: 1,382,010 tokens
2025: 11,564,909 tokens
What’s one challenge that you just suppose will succeed?
— CoinGecko (@coingecko) January 14, 2026
Collectively, 2024 and 2025 accounted for greater than 96% of all crypto token failures since 2021, reflecting how latest market situations basically altered token survivability.
CoinGecko’s methodology targeted solely on cryptocurrencies that had recorded a minimum of one commerce and had been listed on GeckoTerminal earlier than changing into inactive.
Tokens with zero buying and selling exercise had been excluded, whereas solely graduated Pump.enjoyable tokens had been included, reinforcing the credibility of the dataset.
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This autumn 2025 Marked the Breaking Level Amid Meme Coin Saturation and “Crime Szn” Woes
The collapse accelerated dramatically within the remaining months of the yr. This autumn 2025 alone noticed 7.7 million token failures, representing 34.9% of all recorded collapses over the 5 years.
This surge coincided with the October 10 liquidation cascade, throughout which $19 billion in leveraged positions had been worn out inside 24 hours, marking the biggest single-day deleveraging occasion in crypto historical past.
The shock uncovered vulnerabilities throughout thinly traded tokens, a lot of which:
- Lacked adequate liquidity or
- Dedicated market members to outlive excessive volatility.
CoinGecko famous that the sharp decline in survivability was significantly pronounced inside the meme coin sector, which had expanded shortly all year long.
The rise of easy-to-use launchpads performed a central position within the wave of failures. Platforms like Pump.enjoyable have considerably decreased technical obstacles, permitting practically anybody to launch a token inside minutes.
That is big.
The 11.5M token failures in 2025 exposes a coverage vacuum.
1️⃣ Zero regulation on launching a token. Anybody can deploy one in minutes.
2️⃣ Platforms like https://t.co/3tm9tPLONE massively decrease friction, allow mass launches, and take no accountability for outcomes.…
— Sapna Singh (@AdvSapna_) January 14, 2026
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Whereas this democratized experimentation, it additionally flooded the market with low-effort tasks missing long-term viability.
DWF Labs government Andrei Grachev described the setting as a criminal offense season, pointing to systemic pressures dealing with each founders and traders.
Principally it created a “crime szn”, failure charge is so excessive, which impacts founders and traders – onerous to get consideration, onerous to get liquidity, onerous to discover a market match.
Market is BTC, blue chips and playing.
Retail liquidity is being burn
Liquidity wars are ongoing https://t.co/o5EACJJ6Ft
— Andrei Grachev 🦅🟠 $FF (@ag_dwf) January 15, 2026
His feedback mirror a broader consolidation underway within the crypto markets, the place capital is more and more gravitating towards Bitcoin, established belongings, and short-term speculative trades. This leaves newer tasks struggling to draw sustainable liquidity.
The focus of failures in 2025 has intensified considerations concerning the long-term well being of token creation practices.
Whereas innovation stays a cornerstone of the crypto market, the info counsel that the market’s capability to soak up new tasks has been severely overstretched.
As tens of millions of tokens vanish, retail confidence continues to erode, lowering accessible liquidity and elevating the bar for future launches.
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Why the Token Failure Cycle Might Lengthen Into 2026
In the meantime, the forces that drove crypto’s collapse in 2025 present little signal of reversing. Token creation stays frictionless, retail liquidity is fragmented, and market consideration continues to pay attention round Bitcoin, blue-chip belongings, and short-term speculative trades.
CoinGecko’s knowledge exhibits that token provide has grown far quicker than the market’s capability to soak up it. With practically 20.2 million tasks listed by the tip of 2025, even a modest continuation of launchpad-driven issuance dangers pushing failure charges increased in 2026. That is very true if demand and liquidity fail to get better.
I hope we repair this in 2026.
Most launches in 2025 didn’t fail as a result of the “market was bad.”
They failed as a result of the launch design was structurally short-vol and short-trust.
Listed here are the recurring launch patterns that nuked most of them ↓
1️⃣ Excessive FDV, low float:
You’re… pic.twitter.com/FC0ngx1HrW
— Stacy Muur (@stacy_muur) December 15, 2025
Market stress occasions additionally stay a key vulnerability. The October 10 liquidation cascade, which worn out $19 billion in leveraged positions inside 24 hours, demonstrated how shortly systemic shocks can cascade by way of thinly traded belongings.
Tokens missing deep liquidity or dedicated person bases had been disproportionately affected, suggesting comparable volatility episodes might set off further mass failures.
DWF Labs managing companion Andrei Grachev warned that the present setting is structurally hostile to new tasks, describing ongoing “liquidity wars” throughout crypto markets.
As retail capital thins and competitors intensifies, newer tokens face rising obstacles to survival. With out adjustments to launch incentives, disclosure requirements, or investor schooling, the market dangers repeating the identical cycle: fast issuance, temporary hypothesis, and eventual collapse.
Whereas trade members argue that this purge might finally strengthen crypto by eliminating weak tasks, the info counsel the adjustment is much from full.
If token creation continues to outpace liquidity development, 2026 might even see fewer launches, however not essentially fewer failures.
