More Than Half of Crypto Tokens Ever Launched Have "Died" — And Most Will Disappear by 2025

A new report from CoinGecko reveals a striking fact: more than half of all cryptocurrencies ever issued on the market are no longer being traded. Even more notably, most of these “dead” tokens occurred solely in 2025.

Based on data analysis from GeckoTerminal from mid-2021 to the end of 2025, nearly 20.2 million tokens have been listed. Of these, approximately 53.2% — equivalent to over 10.7 million tokens — are no longer active. The year 2025 alone saw up to 11.6 million failed tokens, accounting for 86.3% of all “dead” projects in the past five years. The Meme Coin Wave and “Instant Noodle” Projects According to CoinGecko analyst Shaun Paul Lee, the main reason behind the wave of disappearing tokens is the explosion of meme coins and experimental projects created extremely easily through launchpad platforms like pump.fun. These platforms lower the barriers to entry, allowing anyone to create tokens in just a few minutes. As a result, millions of highly speculative assets have emerged with almost no development team, no roadmap, and no clear utility value. Many tokens have even only had a few transactions before disappearing completely. Q4/2025: The Largest Collapse in History Q4 of 2025 is considered the worst period. In just three months, up to 7.7 million tokens failed — representing about 35% of all crypto projects “dead” since 2021. This collapse occurred immediately after the “liquidation cascade” event on October 10, 2025, when $19 billion in leveraged positions on the crypto market were liquidated in a single day. This is regarded as the largest leverage reduction in cryptocurrency history, causing the already overheated market driven by short-term speculation to plunge into panic. Uncontrolled Boom of the Open Market Looking back, the number of failed projects in 2021 was only 2,584. By 2024, this number had increased to over 1.3 million. And in 2025, it truly “exploded.” CoinGecko’s data only counts projects that had at least one transaction before ceasing operations, showing how rapidly the crypto market is saturating when anyone can issue tokens. Lessons for Investors The crypto market offers great opportunities but is also fraught with risks. The rapid creation and disappearance of millions of tokens in a short period demonstrate: Not all tokens are investment opportunitiesMeme coins and projects without a solid development foundation often carry extremely high risks Overly euphoric cycles are usually accompanied by devastating crashes Crypto remains a rapidly evolving field, but 2025 has proven that ease of token creation also means a huge “death” rate. For investors, selecting quality projects becomes more important than ever.