Meme Coins Bear the Brunt as 11.6M Crypto Projects Fail in 2025
Crypto market volatility took a heavy toll on digital asset initiatives final 12 months, with meme cash absorbing the bulk of the injury.
Key Takeaways:
- More than 11.6 million crypto initiatives failed in 2025, with meme cash hit hardest.
- An October market crash accelerated failures, wiping out 7.7 million tokens in This fall.
- Low-barrier launchpads flooded the market, magnifying losses as sentiment turned.
More than 11.6 million crypto initiatives failed in 2025, marking the highest annual complete on file and underscoring the fragility of speculative tokens in periods of market stress.
The sharpest losses got here in the last quarter of the 12 months.
7.7M Tokens Went Dark in This fall After October Market Crash
According to a report released Friday by CoinGecko analysis analyst Shaun Paul Lee, roughly 7.7 million tokens listed on GeckoTerminal stopped buying and selling between October and December.
Lee pointed to the Oct. 10 market crash, when greater than $19 billion in leveraged positions have been liquidated in a single day, as a decisive set off that accelerated challenge failures.
“This sharp decline in token survivability could also be linked to the broader market turbulence all through the 12 months, which notably affected the meme coin sector,” Lee mentioned.
CoinGecko defines a failed cryptocurrency as a token that was as soon as actively traded on GeckoTerminal however has since ceased exercise.
The scale of the collapse represents a dramatic bounce from earlier years. Around 1.3 million initiatives failed in 2024, whereas simply 2,584 failures have been recorded in 2021, highlighting how rapidly threat urge for food expanded over the previous cycle.
Meme cash, usually pushed by social momentum quite than fundamentals, are inclined to amplify these swings.
Beyond market stress, sheer quantity performed a central function. GeckoTerminal knowledge reveals the variety of listed tokens climbed from about 3 million at the finish of 2024 to almost 20 million by the shut of 2025.
Lee attributed a lot of that progress to the rise of low-friction token launch instruments, notably on Solana.
The launch of pump.enjoyable in early 2024 made it simpler than ever to deploy new tokens, fueling an inflow of initiatives with minimal improvement or endurance.
“The ease of launching tokens on launchpads has led to a surge in low-effort meme cash getting into the market,” Lee mentioned.
Before 2024, annual crypto failures have been sometimes in the low six figures, with initiatives launched between 2021 and 2023 accounting for simply 3.4% of all failures over the previous 5 years.
Meme cash Rebound in Early 2026 as Market Cap and Volumes Jump
Despite final 12 months’s washout, meme cash entered 2026 with renewed momentum.
Data from CoinMarketCap reveals the sector’s market capitalization rose from $38 billion in late December to $47.7 billion in early January, earlier than easing to round $43.7 billion.
Transaction volumes surged as nicely, briefly leaping greater than 300% earlier than settling again, suggesting speculative curiosity has returned.
Tokens such as PEPE, BONK, and FLOKI led the rebound with robust double-digit good points, reigniting debate over whether or not the transfer displays short-term hypothesis or an early sign of broader altcoin rotation.
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