53% of Crypto Tokens Launched Since 2021 Have Failed, Most in 2025 (coindesk.com) 43
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"More than half of all cryptocurrencies ever launched are now defunct," reports CoinDesk, citing a new analysis by cryptocurrency data aggregator CoinGecko.
And most of those failures occurred in 2025: The study looked at token listings on GeckoTerminal between mid-2021 and the end of 2025. Of the nearly 20.2 million tokens that entered the market during that period, 53.2% are no longer actively traded. A staggering 11.6 million of those failures happened in 2025 alone — accounting for 86.3% of all token deaths over the past five years.
One key driver behind the surge in dead tokens was the rise of low-effort memecoins and experimental projects launched via crypto launchpads like pump.fun, CoinGecko analyst Shaun Paul Lee said. These platforms lowered the barrier to entry for token creation, leading to a wave of speculative assets with little or no development backing. Many of these tokens never made it past a handful of trades before disappearing.
And most of those failures occurred in 2025: The study looked at token listings on GeckoTerminal between mid-2021 and the end of 2025. Of the nearly 20.2 million tokens that entered the market during that period, 53.2% are no longer actively traded. A staggering 11.6 million of those failures happened in 2025 alone — accounting for 86.3% of all token deaths over the past five years.
One key driver behind the surge in dead tokens was the rise of low-effort memecoins and experimental projects launched via crypto launchpads like pump.fun, CoinGecko analyst Shaun Paul Lee said. These platforms lowered the barrier to entry for token creation, leading to a wave of speculative assets with little or no development backing. Many of these tokens never made it past a handful of trades before disappearing.
We were right about that (Score:2, Insightful)
And we're all going to be right about AI.
Re: We were right about that (Score:5, Funny)
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AI have plenty uses, but right now there's a bunch of morons bruteforcing instead of investing in optimizing and creating new ways to use it.
This won't be a hype that will die by just being useless as NFTs were. The "crash" will happen with some random ass guy optimizing the fuck out of it and making all the hyper servers useless overnight.
What if we replaced commenting with AI (Score:3)
Because nobody really enjoys commenting, and it's hard. You have to type stuff and click a button, and sometimes maybe even actually think before posting. With the new ShartpostAI, users will be able to simply type into a chat window what they want their post to say, and the ShartMachine will meticulously converge on the optimum string of words that will simultaneously delight and offend the PostSummaryAI that's now reading the posts instead of actual humans.
Well, there is one very successful crypto scheme (Score:5, Informative)
And it is run by the president of the land of the brave, the home of the free.
If you need a pardon, or some other service, like removing a regulation, etc, you negotiate the price, buy some of his memecoins and voila, the government gets it done.
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TACO-coin?
Re:Well, there is one very successful crypto schem (Score:5, Informative)
I dunno, it seems the grifter keeps on delivering. [apnews.com]
Grifters be griftin' (Score:5, Insightful)
More than half of all cryptocurrencies ever launched are now defunct.
Suckers.
It's said a sucker is born every minute but that clearly underestimates the size of the sucker pool.
Re:Grifters be griftin' (Score:5, Informative)
The 10 biggest holders of TrumpCoin (roughly those who held about $250,000 or more) got an exclusive dinner with him at the White House. When this was announced the value shot up because this became a great way to get a ear with the President.
In the grand scheme of things, this is relatively cheap, campaign financing wise.
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The 10 biggest holders of TrumpCoin (roughly those who held about $250,000 or more) got an exclusive dinner with him at the White House. When this was announced the value shot up because this became a great way to get a ear with the President.
In the grand scheme of things, this is relatively cheap, campaign financing wise.
In the "grand scheme of things" this scheme is straight-up corruption.
The value of the emolument is only relevant to the severity of the criminal sentence.
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Corruption. Campaign Finance. We managed to turn those terms into synonyms in this country a long, LONG time ago.
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That's not universally accurate. Some of them were jokes. (Admittedly, at least one of the jokes started handling real money.)
FWIW, I don't know if they counted "in game" currencies as "cryptocurrency", but I don't know why they shouldn't. Buying a "magic sword" isn't much different from buying a link to a picture.
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It also means that 47% of the cryptocurrencies SUCCEED. This makes the success factor WAY above % of VC success, Startup success, mom and pop shop success....
I guess it will depend how to qualify succeed/failed.
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It also means that 47% of the cryptocurrencies SUCCEED. This makes the success factor WAY above % of VC success, Startup success, mom and pop shop success....
I guess it will depend how to qualify succeed/failed.
And the return on invested value from 2021 to 2025 is ...?
Crypto Currency is only useful as a short term means of exchange to non-extradition countries.
Crypto Currency is FOR CRIME! [searx.party]
Before touching Crypto read Number Go Up! [goodreads.com]
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Nothing new (Score:2)
The ICO days of 2017-2020/2021 produced a lot of now-dead projects as well. When people can just fork and launch memecoins, there's plenty of incentive to take a shot at being the next PEPE. All you need is enough cash for an exchange listing fee.
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Please tell me, what percentage of Silicon Valley startups survived in this time frame, what percentage of "new media" outfits made it through this time, and which restaurants opened and stayed open. This is really nothing new. This is, how capitalism is supposed to work: present idea, find initial funding, see, whether you can make money with this. Fail early, fail often, find your path to success.
You realize, that most web startups from late 90ies went up in smoke, but you'll agree, that the web is here t
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No idea, and that fact isn't relevant to the discussion. Even the sketchiest dot bomb era startup pales in comparison to garbage like PEPE2.
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I was in the epicenter of Silicon Valley right when the dotcom bubble started inflating unreasonably. Looking at the level of douche baggery drawing millions from clueless but enthusiastic investors was breath taking. Yes, PEPE is trash, PEPE2 (whatever this is) is likely even worse trash, but neither are worse than some of the things I saw back then, and neither deserved their crazy valuations.
PEPE and these pathetic meme coins were by far not the only tokens created in this time frame: many tokens were c
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not "tokens" (Score:3)
A meaningful currency would be nice... (Score:2)
It would be nice if we could get a cryptocurrency with true anonymity like Monero, ability to prune the blockchain so only the minimum transactions have to be kept, and so the blockchain never constantly grows, supports "taxes", where when Alice sends Bob one unit of the coin, a tenth of the unit is created and sent to Charlie who is the government tax office. This way, taxes are paid automatically (although in an inflationary manner).
Would be nice to see more experimental coins, and not just pump/dump stu
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Your taxes idea is compatible with any smart contract but it will be a barrier to adoption. Why would I use a stablecoin that taxes me when there are ones that don't?
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It makes it easier to handle income tax. Just use the coin... and note, this is -not- a stablecoin, and it isn't pinned to any valuer, and it pays your taxes for you. No paperwork needed. However, it is inflationary because of this.
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Why would I want to pay extra taxes though?
Ha ha ha, I invested in ugly monkey picture NTFs (Score:2)
They are cryptomagically blockchained so no way they are able to fail like these fake tokens.
Since I don't legally own the picture, I printed out the NFT QR code and put it above my couch, which is a real vintage bull leather couch by the way.
All my best friends are so jealous and take pictures over my couch all the time.
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How many Beanie Babies is it worth?
But did they? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the point of most of these cryptos was for their creators to jump on the hype train and make a quick cash crab, and those creators successfully executed an exit strategy to dump their crypto product somewhere near its peak - then those cryptos were a success; they did not fail in their intended purpose.
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The problem is, you never know where the peak is.
If you had have bought Bitcoin at $1, then it went to $5, then started sliding back toward $3, would you sold and taking 300% gain.
See the problem with gambling on instruments with no intrinsic value.
That number seems way too low. (Score:2)
I've personally launched at least 5 ( A bunch of reeeeaaal duds).
More like over 99.9999% (Score:2)
glass half full (Score:2)
47% is way more than I expected to not fail.
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That was my first thought too. You would think the lack of failures is because there is a low cost to leaving a crypto running even when it is all but forgotten, but according to the article the measurement is about no longer being "actively traded". So apparently 47% are still actively traded which is surprisingly high. Perhaps it is similarly inexpensive to get bots to trade back and forth to give the illusion of activity.
Those fools ! (Score:2)
Looking for a buyer for them actually, plan to invest in OpenAI next.
blockchain tech was always doomed to fail (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing that gets me is that anybody who has any technical knowledge, upon looking at crypto's underlying technology: blockchain, can clearly see it doesn't make sense.
Blockchain isn't any less fault tolerant than existing systems, and because of its precarious "decentralized" nature, requiring random self-interested parties to see a financial reason to run nodes based on the price of the tokens, there's no guarantee whatsoever: a) the "price" of a digital abstraction that has no intrinsic value will continue to go up or say above zero, or b) there's any other reason to run the software and waste resources when it accomplishes nothing for society.
Here is a great documentary that explains it all [youtube.com]. No self-respecting software engineer would buy into this goofy scheme.
If you want "immutability" just use cryptographic signing in traditional, relational databases.
If you want "decentralization" there are better facilities out there that aren't tied to sketchy ponzi-scheme-like digital tokens, such as IFPS.
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Agree in the main, but decentralisation is meant to solve the trust issue. Sovereign currencies are centrally controlled by a single, trusted entity, the government (yes, plenty of cynical comment fodder here). Given cryptos aim to be community currencies out of reach of the government and corporate interests, there's few other options.
There are already plenty of examples of theft/fraud from wallet brokers where that trust is given to a centralised company in the form of wallet credentials. For all crypto's
I'd Argue 100% Success Rate (Score:3)
Shocker (Score:1)
Crypto is for Crime (Score:2)
Cryptocurrency is the primary way that Russian hackers extract payments from American hospitals and governments. Endangering lives to get rich off crypto is a good enough reason to stop all US trade in cryptocurrency -- but hey, we've got a pedophile, child rapist in the White House who is getting rich off crypto too.
Really? Pump.fun? (Score:2)