SKN | More Than Half of All Crypto Tokens Have Failed as 2025 Becomes a Mass Extinction Event

Key Points

More than half of all cryptocurrencies ever launched are now effectively dead, marking one of the most brutal periods of attrition the digital asset industry has experienced since its inception. A new analysis by CoinGecko shows that the overwhelming majority of token failures occurred in 2025, underscoring how excess speculation, low barriers to entry, and leverage-driven market stress combined to erase millions of projects in a single year.

According to the study, which analyzed listings on GeckoTerminal between mid-2021 and the end of 2025, roughly 20.2 million tokens entered the market during that period. Of those, 53.2% are no longer actively traded. Even more striking, 11.6 million tokens failed in 2025 alone, accounting for more than 86% of all project failures over the past five years.

The Meme Coin Flood and the Cost of Frictionless Launches

The explosion in failed tokens is closely tied to the rise of ultra-low-effort projects, particularly meme coins and experimental assets launched via no-code token creation platforms. Tools such as pump.fun dramatically reduced the technical and financial barriers to launching a new cryptocurrency.

While this democratization of issuance fueled creativity and short-term speculation, it also unleashed a flood of tokens with no roadmap, no development team, and no sustainable demand. Many projects failed to progress beyond a handful of trades before liquidity dried up and activity ceased entirely.

This shift changed the composition of the crypto market. Instead of a smaller universe of competing projects, investors were suddenly navigating millions of tokens, most of which were designed for rapid speculation rather than long-term utility.

2025: When Market Structure Finally Snapped

The sheer scale of token failures accelerated sharply in the final quarter of 2025. In just three months, 7.7 million tokens went inactive — roughly 35% of all crypto project failures since 2021.

That collapse followed a major market shock in October, when roughly $19 billion in leveraged crypto positions were liquidated in a single day. The event triggered one of the largest deleveraging cascades in crypto history, draining liquidity from speculative corners of the market and exposing how fragile many token ecosystems had become.

Once leverage unwound, projects that relied on constant inflows of speculative capital were unable to survive. With no organic users or economic purpose, millions of tokens simply vanished from active trading.

A Stark Contrast With Earlier Crypto Cycles

The magnitude of recent failures highlights how dramatically the market has evolved. In 2021, just 2,584 projects failed — a trivial number by today’s standards. That figure climbed to more than 1.3 million in 2024 before exploding in 2025.

The data reflects how crypto’s open-access design, once celebrated as a feature, can become a liability at scale. When anyone can launch a token instantly, market saturation becomes inevitable, and survival increasingly depends on differentiation, liquidity, and real usage rather than hype alone.

Investor Psychology and the Post-Speculation Reset

The token wipeout also marks a psychological turning point. After years of chasing micro-cap upside, traders are showing renewed caution, favoring established assets and infrastructure over experimental bets. The collapse has reinforced a hard lesson: not all tokens are innovation, and most do not deserve long-term capital.

What Comes Next

The mass extinction of crypto tokens may ultimately prove constructive. Fewer active projects could mean clearer price discovery, stronger liquidity concentration, and a healthier environment for builders focused on durable value rather than viral momentum.

If 2025 was the year excess finally met its limits, the next phase of crypto is likely to reward restraint, real utility, and survivability — not just the ease of launching yet another token.