Memecoins Fuel Deadliest Year for Crypto Tokens
Crypto market turbulence caused over 11.6 million token failures in 2025, the highest ever, largely driven by memecoins.Summary
The year 2025 marked the deadliest for crypto tokens, with over 11.6 million projects listed on GeckoTerminal ceasing active trading, according to a report by CoinGecko analyst Shaun Paul Lee. The fourth quarter was particularly severe, seeing 7.7 million tokens fail, catalyzed by the Oct. 10 market crash that liquidated over $19 billion in leverage. Lee noted that token survivability sharply declined, contrasting with previous years where only 1.3 million projects failed in 2024 and just 2,584 in 2021. A major contributing factor to the high failure rate was the massive influx of new coins; the number of tokens listed on GeckoTerminal grew from 3 million at the end of 2024 to 20 million by the end of 2025. The launch of the Solana memecoin launchpad pump.fun in January 2024 is cited as a key driver for this surge in low-effort memecoins. Despite the high failure rate, memecoins experienced a strong start to 2026, with market capitalization surging from $38 billion to $47.7 billion between December 29 and January 5.
(Source：Cointelegraph)