Majority of Crypto Tokens Have Failed: Insights from CoinGecko
A recent report reveals that over 53% of all cryptocurrencies on CoinGecko’s platform are now categorized as defunct, highlighting significant market instability and speculation.
More than half of cryptocurrencies listed on CoinGecko’s GeckoTerminal have become inactive, marking a notable decline in token viability driven by rampant speculation and market volatility.
According to the latest findings from CoinGecko, 53.2% of digital coins are considered ‘dead’, with most failures occurring during 2025.
Overview of Crypto Project Failures
Roughly 11.6 million tokens have collapsed, representing 86.3% of cryptocurrency failures documented between 2021 and 2025. This surge in failures signifies a break from previous years and the fragility of a market overrun with fleeting projects, particularly in the meme coin sector.
CoinGecko noted that the last quarter of 2025 was especially catastrophic, with approximately 7.7 million tokens failing during just three months. This period made up 34.9% of total project collapses. This spike in failures coincided with heightened market stress following a major liquidation event in October 2025, resulting in a loss of around $19 billion in leveraged positions within a single day—marking one of the largest single-day deleveraging incidents in crypto history.
Despite the rising failures, the number of new cryptocurrency projects has seen exponential growth. The list of projects on GeckoTerminal increased from 428,383 in 2021 to nearly 20.2 million by 2025. The report attributes this surge to the simplification of token creation through launchpads, fostering a wave of underdeveloped meme coins and experimental ventures.
Rising Failure Rates Since 2023
Annual data illustrates a sharp decline in market conditions; only 2,584 projects failed in 2021 compared to 213,075 in 2022, escalating to 245,049 in 2023. The failures skyrocketed in 2024, hitting about 1.38 million before reaching over 11.56 million in 2025.
Despite 2024 marking approximately 3 million new project launches—the second highest number of closures—it accounted for merely 10.3% of total failures across the five years. Findings suggest that prior to 2024, annual failures were consistently below six figures, while failures from 2021 to 2023 represented only 3.4% of total shutdowns since 2021.
