tl;dr
Since 2021, over 50% of all launched cryptocurrencies have failed, with 2025 seeing a similar failure rate within just five months. A CoinGecko report found that out of about 7 million cryptocurrencies listed since 2021, 3.7 million are now defunct, losing utility, liquidity, and community engagemen...
Over 50% of cryptocurrencies launched since 2021 have failed, with 2025 witnessing a rapid increase in token collapses within just five months. A cryptocurrency is deemed "dead" when it loses utility, liquidity, community engagement, trading volume, development activity, and suffers a price drop exceeding 99%.
Most token failures in 2024 and 2025 are attributed to macroeconomic conditions, lack of product-market fit, short-term speculation, developer abandonment, fraud, and poor execution. The surge in new token launches, especially via low-cost platforms like Pump.fun on Solana, has led to a high incidence of ghost coins, driven by ease of creation and fleeting hype.
Meme coins and niche categories such as music and video tokens have exhibited particularly high failure rates, struggling against established platforms and facing scalability challenges. High-profile collapses like BitConnect and OneCoin underscore the risks of projects built on hype, unrealistic promises, and absence of credible technology.
Since 2021, approximately 7 million cryptocurrencies were listed, with 3.7 million now considered defunct due to lost utility and engagement. Failures have surged in 2024 and 2025, with over 1.82 million tokens ceasing trading in 2025 alone—outpacing the 1.38 million failures in 2024.
Key factors behind these failures include poor product-market fit, speculative focus, abandonment by developers (sometimes via rug pulls), financial shortfalls, security issues, and fierce market competition. The accessibility of token creation tools has led to an influx of ghost tokens, especially on Solana, significantly fueling this trend.
Music and video tokens have the highest failure rates at around 75%, hindered by adoption barriers and the dominance of Web2 platforms like Spotify and YouTube. Challenges such as licensing, resource-intensive content delivery, and weak user traction have compounded these difficulties.
Lessons from catastrophic collapses such as BitConnect—exposed as a Ponzi scheme causing nearly $2 billion in investor losses—and OneCoin—a multi-level marketing scam raising $4 billion with no real blockchain—highlight the perils of hype-driven projects lacking verifiable technology.
Investors are advised to conduct thorough due diligence by reviewing whitepapers, verifying project fundamentals, assessing team credibility, analyzing tokenomics and supply distribution, and monitoring community and development activity. Prioritizing sustainable value over speculative gains is essential for avoiding ghost tokens and scams.
As the cryptocurrency landscape evolves, these insights emphasize the critical importance of rigorous research and fundamental value in identifying resilient projects capable of weathering market volatility.