Before the proliferation of meme coin launchpads, failures among cryptocurrency projects remained relatively rare.
More than half of all cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinGecko’s Gecko terminal are currently failing. This significant collapse in token viability is primarily caused by excessive speculation and market instability.
According to the cryptocurrency aggregator’s latest report, 53.2% of all cryptocurrencies listed on Gecko Terminal are classified as defunct, with the majority of outages occurring in 2025.
Encryption project failure
Approximately 11.6 million tokens collapsed, accounting for 86.3% of all crypto failures recorded between 2021 and 2025. The scale of losses was significantly lower than in previous years, indicating the increasing vulnerability of a market increasingly saturated with short-lived projects, especially in the memecoin space.
CoinGecko says the fourth quarter of 2025 was particularly disruptive. In the last three months alone, there were 7.7 million failed tokens, representing 34.9% of all recorded project collapses. Interestingly, this spike in bankruptcies coincides with increased systemic stress following the October 10 liquidation cascade, which wiped out approximately $19 billion in leveraged positions within 24 hours, making it the largest single-day deleveraging event in crypto market history.
While market volatility intensified in 2025, the number of crypto projects continued to expand rapidly. The total number of projects listed on Geckoterminal has grown from just 428,383 in 2021 to nearly 20.2 million by 2025. The report attributes this explosive growth to the ease of token creation via Launchpad, which lowered the barrier to entry and facilitated a wave of low-effort meme coins and experimental projects.
Failure rate will increase sharply after 2023
Annual failure data reveals how rapidly the situation has worsened. In 2021, only 2,584 projects failed. This number increased to 213,075 in 2022 and 245,049 in 2023. Failures accelerated significantly in 2024, reaching approximately 1.38 million, and jumped to more than 11.56 million in 2025.
Despite recording more than 3 million new launches and the second-highest number of project closures in 2024, it still accounted for only 10.3% of all failures over the five-year period. According to CoinGecko research, prior to 2024, and before platforms such as Solana-based meme coin launchpad Pump.fun gained traction, the annual number of cryptocurrency project failures remained in the low six digits, with failures from 2021 to 2023 combined accounting for just 3.4% of all closures after 2021.
You may also like:
Secret partnership bonus for CryptoPotato readers: Use this link to register and unlock $1,500 in exclusive BingX Exchange benefits (for a limited time only).
