2025 Has Been the Worst Year for Dead Crypto Projects

A new report by CoinGecko has claimed that 2025 has seen a worse year yet for dead crypto projects, with 1.8 million tokens collapsing in Q1 alone. This represents 49.7% of all crypto project failures from 2021 to 2025.

CoinGecko’s analysis focused on the concrete data, not on establishing the culprit. Yet, it did hypothesize that market volatility under Trump’s Presidency is responsible for this extreme failure rate.

Why Are So Many Tokens Dying Out?

The crypto industry is no stranger to failures. For example, a few years ago, NFTs were all the rage, but more than 95% of those assets are dead.

CoinGecko’s latest report shows that 2025 has been an exceptional year in this respect. Compared to 2024, there have been fewer token launches and many more crypto project failures in Q1 alone.

Data from CoinMarketCap shows that over 14.65 million different tokens are active right now, and the number has been rising steadily.

One year ago, the site only tracked 2.7 million. The biggest contributor to this growth has been Solana meme coins, as that blockchain’s ecosystem now accounts for more than 60% of all tokens.

However, this rapid increase in crypto projects has also led to more dead tokens. The meme coin sector is especially volatile, and the industry has faced collapse on several prior occasions.

Moreover, a glut of project launches can dilute meme coins’ overall market potential, sinking prominent projects due to quality fears and diminishing returns.

CoinGecko also revealed another disturbing fact: by its reckoning, most crypto projects active since 2021 are now dead. It claims that 52.7% of all such tokens have failed and that the failure rate is increasing.

New launches still outweigh collapses, but the trend does not look sustainable.

The report proposed a clear hypothesis for this behavior. CoinGecko believes it credible that Trump’s tariff threats and ensuing recession fears are responsible for these dead crypto projects. Meme coin launches rose dramatically after his election, and market turbulence is killing them off.

To be clear, CoinGecko’s study did not attempt to prove a cause; it just analyzed the failures themselves. Complicated factors may be creating all these dead crypto projects.

Still, it identified the trends, and the hard data is convincing in its own right. The meme coin industry, as currently defined, may not last at this rate.