TL;DR
- Historic Memecoin’s Collapse: The crypto sector saw 11.6 million project failures in 2025, representing 86.3% of all failures recorded between 2021 and 2025.
- Market Shock: The October 10 liquidation cascade, which wiped out $19 billion in leveraged positions, triggered a wave of memecoin failures, including 7.7 million collapses in Q4 alone.
- Unsustainable Growth: Despite rising failures, total crypto listings surged to nearly 20.2 million by 2025, driven by easy token creation that flooded the market with short‑lived memecoins.
The scale of the 2025 memecoin collapse has now been quantified, and the numbers reveal a historic wipeout. According to new data, 11.6 million cryptocurrency projects failed in 2025, marking the most severe contraction the sector has ever recorded. The memecoin ecosystem, already known for rapid launches and short lifespans, became the epicenter of this unprecedented downturn as market turbulence intensified and speculative liquidity evaporated.
A Record Year of Failures Across the Crypto Landscape
CoinGecko’s research shows that 86.3% of all crypto project failures between 2021 and 2025 occurred in 2025, underscoring how sharply survivability deteriorated. The year’s collapse dwarfed previous cycles, with 2024 seeing nearly 1.4 million failures by comparison. The data highlights how the memecoin boom, fueled by frictionless token creation on launchpads, produced a flood of low‑effort projects that could not withstand shifting market conditions. The result was a massive accumulation of dead tokens that overwhelmed the broader ecosystem.
Market Turbulence and the October Liquidation Cascade
The sharp decline in project viability was closely tied to broader market instability. CoinGecko attributes much of the damage to the October 10 liquidation cascade, a record event that erased $19 billion in leveraged positions within 24 hours. This shock triggered a chain reaction across speculative assets, particularly memecoins, which rely heavily on momentum and liquidity. The fourth quarter alone saw 7.7 million project failures, representing 34.9% of all recorded collapses in the five‑year dataset.
Explosive Growth in Token Launches Despite Rising Failures
Paradoxically, the total number of cryptocurrency projects continued to surge. GeckoTerminal listings expanded from 428,383 in 2021 to nearly 20.2 million by 2025, driven by the ease of launching tokens. This expansion created an environment where unsustainable projects proliferated faster than market demand, accelerating the rate of failures. The memecoin sector, in particular, became saturated with experimental and short‑lived tokens.
A Five‑Year Breakdown of Crypto Project Mortality
The dataset shows a dramatic escalation: 2,584 failures in 2021, 213,075 in 2022, 245,049 in 2023, 1,382,010 in 2024, and 11,564,909 in 2025. In total, 13.4 million cryptocurrencies have died since 2021, painting a stark picture of an industry defined by rapid creation and even faster abandonment.
