Approximately 2 million cryptocurrency tokens suffered a decline in Q1 2025.
New research from CoinGecko suggests that 2025 has been a dismal year for expired crypto projects, with a whopping 1.8 million tokens crashing in Q1 alone. This represents a staggering 49.7% of all crypto project failures between 2021 and 2025.
CoinGecko's investigation homed in on the cold, hard facts, but didn't offer a smoking gun on the culprit. Still, they speculate that the market's wild swings during Trump's term could be to blame for this high failure rate.
Why are so many tokens biting the dust?
crypto world isn't new to failures. For instance, a few years back, NFTs were all the rage, but roughly 95% of those assets disappeared into thin air.
CoinGecko's latest report highlights that 2025 has been a standout year in this department. Compared to 2024, we've seen fewer token launches and more crypto project failures in Q1 alone.
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Current data from CoinMarketCap indicates that approximately 14.65 million active tokens exist right now, with that number steadily rising. Only a year ago, the site only tracked 2.7 million active tokens. The Solana meme coin ecosystem has been the main driver of this growth, accounting for over 60% of all tokens.
The rapid increase in crypto projects has also led to a surplus of dead tokens. Meme coins are known for their volatility, and the industry has seen collapses on multiple previous occasions.
Moreover, an oversupply of project launches can dilute the potential of meme coins, causing significant projects to sink due to fears of low quality and declining returns.
CoinGecko also provides a startling statistic: they estimate that 52.7% of all active projects since 2021 have already failed. This failure rate is skyrocketing. While new launches are still outpacing collapses, the trend doesn't look sustainable.
The report proposes a clear theory: Trump's tariff threats and ensuing recession fears could be the driving force behind these dead crypto projects. The number of meme coin launches spiked after his election, and market turbulence appears to be killing them off.
It is crucial to note that CoinGecko's study did not aim to prove causation; it solely analyzed the failures themselves. While numerous factors could be responsible for this high failure rate, the statistical trends can't be dismissed. The meme coin industry, in its current form, may not survive the onslaught.
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Deep Dive: Behind the Cryptocurrency Death Toll
The high failure rate of crypto projects between 2021 and 2025 can be attributed to several factors:
- Market saturation: As platforms such as pump.fun allowed users to create tokens with minimal effort, the number of low-quality projects skyrocketed. The surplus overwhelmed the market and eroded investor interest.
- Speculative nature: Most failed tokens offered no utility or long-term vision, relying on hype-driven trading instead. Tokens were often abandoned or "rugged" shortly after launch, as creators cashed out without delivering promised projects.
- Historical failure rates:
- 2021–2023: combined failures accounted for around 460,000 projects
- 2024: nearly 1.4 million failures (37.7% of total)
- 2025 Q1: over 1.8 million failures (49.7% of all failures between 2021 and 2025)
The dramatic spike in failures during 2024–2025 coincides directly with the rise of token-creation platforms.
Trump's presidency remains a potential catalyst for the devastating Q1 2025 crypto project collapses, according to CoinGecko's report. Key observations:
- Temporal Overlap: The 1.8 million Q1 2025 failures occurred during broader market turbulence during Trump's return to office.
- Policy Uncertainty: Regulatory or macroeconomic shifts under Trump's administration may have contributed to reduced investor confidence.
While a direct causal link hasn't been established, CoinGecko's report suggests that the market volatility following Trump's January 2025 inauguration could have amplified the collapse.
Final Thoughts
The primary causes were oversaturation and speculative tokenomics, with Trump’s presidency remaining a correlational, rather than definitively causal, factor in the 2025 collapse.
- The recent research by CoinGecko shows that more than half of all crypto projects since 2021 have failed, making 2025 a dismal year for crypto with over 1.8 million tokens crashing in Q1 alone.
- The investigation by CoinGecko points to the market's wild swings during Trump's term as a potential culprit for the high failure rate of crypto projects.
- NFTs, which were popular a few years back, have seen 95% of the assets disappear into thin air.
- The number of active tokens has significantly increased, with 14.65 million active tokens currently tracked by CoinMarketCap, a rise from 2.7 million just a year ago.
- The Solana meme coin ecosystem has been the main driver of this growth, accounting for over 60% of all tokens.
- oversupply of low-quality projects can lead to the failure of significant projects due to fears of low quality and declining returns.
- CoinGecko's report suggests that the market volatility following Trump's January 2025 inauguration could have amplified the collapse of crypto projects, although a direct causal link hasn't been established.
- To dive into crypto trading, one can consider platforms such as Uphold, TonTrader, dYdX, Arkham, BingX, and HTX, in partnership with BeInCrypto.
