Cryptocurrency crash: Nearly Half of Created Cryptos Cease to Exist
In the bustling crypto landscape, it's a real jungle out there. CoinGecko's sobering report reveals that a whopping 52% of all digital currencies born since 2021 have bitten the dust. Out of almost 7 million cryptos, a staggering 3.7 million have chuckled their last chuckle, almost vanishing like a mirage in the desert.
The first quarter of 2025 added to the grim statistic with a harsh reality check, as 1.8 million tokens tanked, accounting for a whopping 49.7% of the cryptocurrency cemeteries. Analysts point their fingers at the dire market conditions, which tightened their grips following Donald Trump's inauguration in January 2025. This nasty downturn in the crypto market coincided with Trump's grand entrance.
The growth of crypto projects has been shooting up like a rocket in recent times. While CoinGecko kept an eye on merely 428,383 projects back in the day, it has since stared at nearly 7 million projects. Experts reckon this exponential surge is due to the pump.fun storm, which swept away the need for tech juggernauts to create tokens, unleashing a tidal wave of low-cost meme coins on the market.
The smoldering remains of 2024 saw nearly 1.4 million crypto projects go poof, making up a chunky 37.7% of the shit-happens register over the past five years. But, 2024 also put on a dazzling display of new crypto launches with over 3 million little darlings joining the party.
The sad sack story is that project failures between 2021 and 2023 accounted for only 12.6% of the crypto graves over the past five years.
Our very own Oksana Kuznetsova, a crypto sleuth if you will, has pieced together a web of reasons for the high failure rate of post-2021 cryptos: market saturation, speculation, lack of regulation, volatility, and the nifty pump.fun.
When it comes to the pump-fun fair, it's a Bitcoin-like baker who makes the bread – easy, accessible, and tasty. This little bake shop:
- Makes Creation a Breeze: It shrinks the distance from bakers to bread and energizes the DIY spirit, allowing anyone to whip up a token without breaking a sweat.
- Encourages Speculative Cooking: Many of these homemade concoctions are speculative in nature, overshadowed by shallow fundamentals, leading to a high failure rate as they fail to charm their way into the hearts of investors.
- Contributes to Bready Market: The sheer number of doughboys can lead to a carb-loaded bakery shelf, where the cream of the crop barely stands out. The competition is brutal, and the survival of the fittest becomes a cruel reality.
- In the wake of the 2025 first quarter, a disheartening 1.8 million cryptocurrencies vanished, accounting for a significant 49.7% of the digital currencies that have perished since 2021.
- The exponential surge in the growth of crypto projects, largely due to the pump.fun storm, has led to nearly 7 million projects being monitored by CoinGecko, a stark contrast to the mere 428,383 projects they tracked initially.
- Over the past five years, 37.7% of all cryptocurrency projects that have ceased to exist were snuffed out in the year 2024, with over 1.4 million projects meeting their demise.
- Amidst the high failure rate of post-2021 cryptocurrencies, Oksana Kuznetsova, a renowned crypto sleuth, has identified several reasons for the downfall, including market saturation, speculation, lack of regulation, volatility, and the convenient pump.fun platform.
