Dead Coins: Over 50% of Cryptocurrencies Have Failed

How Many Crypto Coins Have Died?

Over 50% of all cryptocurrencies have failed. Of the nearly 7 million cryptocurrencies listed on GeckoTerminal since 2021, 3.7 million have since stopped trading and are considered failed.

52.7% of all cryptocurrencies on GeckoTerminal have failed, with the majority occurring during 2024 and early 2025. Alarmingly, the first quarter of 2025 alone saw the collapse of 1.8 million tokens, making up 49.7% of all recorded project failures. This sharp decline in token survivability may be linked to broader market turbulence, particularly following Donald Trump's inauguration in January 2025, which coincided with a downturn in the crypto market.

The total number of cryptocurrency projects has also skyrocketed. In 2021, 428,383 projects were listed on GeckoTerminal. However, by 2025, that number had ballooned to nearly 7 million projects. Much of this jump can be attributed to the launch of pump.fun, which simplified the process of creating tokens, leading to a flood of meme coins and low-effort projects entering the market. 

49.7% of All Crypto Coin Failures Happened in 2025

As of March 31, 1.8 million cryptocurrency projects have failed in 2025, the highest number of failures recorded in a single year. These failures account for 49.7% of all project closures between 2021 and 2025. 

This is followed by 2024, which saw nearly 1.4 million projects fail, accounting for 37.7% of all failures in the past five years. However, it also saw the highest number of launches, with over 3.0 million new projects coming to market. Before the launch of pump.fun in 2024, cryptocurrency failures numbered in the low six digits. Project failures between 2021 and 2023 made up just 12.6% of all cryptocurrency failures over the past five years.

Cryptocurrency Failures by Year

The number of cryptocurrency failures by year, between 2021 and 2025, are:

Methodology

This study examines the total number of coins and tokens, collectively termed as ‘cryptocurrencies’, once listed on GeckoTerminal that are no longer actively traded (‘dead’ or ‘failed’), grouped by the year they last had an active trade. Data was taken between July 1, 2021 and March 31, 2025.

Only tokens that had one trade or more before going defunct were considered. Meanwhile, only pump.fun tokens which have ‘graduated’, were included in the study. 

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Curious to find out more about our previous research studies? Check out this one we did on Bitcoin (BTC) Holdings of Countries.