Crypto Market Sees Massive Token Failures Since 2021
Over 3.7 million cryptocurrency tokens have vanished since 2021. Nearly half of these failures happened during the Pump.fun-driven memecoin craze.
GeckoTerminal, a crypto pricing platform, reveals that 1.8 million tokens failed in Q1 2025 alone. this accounts for 49.7% of all token failures between 2021 and 2025. In 2024, about 1.4 million projects also shut down, making up 37.7% of the failures.
GeckoTerminal suggests that market turbulence,especially after Donald Trumpās inauguration in January 2025,might have caused this decline.The crypto market faced a downturn during this period.
Meanwhile, the number of new crypto projects has surged. In 2021, around 428,000 tokens were listed. by 2025, this number skyrocketed to nearly seven million. The growth is largely due to Pump.fun, which made creating tokens easier, leading to a flood of meme coins.
Before Pump.fun in 2024, failures were lower, with only low six digits from 2021 to 2023. These three years accounted for just 12.6% of total token deaths.
GeckoTerminal defines ādead tokensā as those no longer actively traded. Only tokens with at least one trade before going defunct are considered.
