The cryptocurrency market has recorded a troublesome number of failed projects in recent years. According to data from CoinGecko, over 50% of all cryptocurrencies ever listed have now become inactive.
Since 2021, nearly 7 million crypto coins have been listed on the platform. Out of these, about 3.7 million projects have stopped trading and are now considered dead. This means 52.7% of all cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinGecko, with most of these closures happening in 2024 and early 2025.
2025 Is the Worst Year So Far
In just the first three months of 2025, around 1.8 million crypto coins have failed. This is the highest number of project shutdowns in a single year and makes up nearly half of all crypto failures since 2021.
Experts say this big drop in crypto projects could be linked to market problems that started after Donald Trump became President again in January 2025, which caused crypto prices to fall.
Meme Coins and Quick-Launch Tokens Flood The Market
The total number of crypto projects has also increased in recent years. In 2021, there were around 428,000 projects listed. By 2025, that number had jumped to almost 7 million. A major factor behind this growth was the launch of pump.fun in 2024, a platform that made it extremely easy for users to create their own tokens. As a result, the market was flooded with meme coins and low-effort projects, many of which didn’t survive for long.
Before 2024, the number of failed projects was much lower. But after the arrival of easy-to-use token-making platforms, the number of shutdowns jumped sharply. Along with token failures, major security breaches like the Mantra Crash and Bybit hack have shaken investor confidence. The growing number of scams, hacks, and failed projects shows the risks in the crypto market.
