Crypto market turmoil decimated memecoins specifically last 12 months and caused the variety of failed crypto projects to rise to over 11.6 million in 2025, the best level in a single 12 months.
According to a report published Friday by CoinGecko research analyst Shaun Paul Lee, the fourth quarter of 2025 was among the many worst. 7.7 million tokens listed on GeckoTerminal ceased lively trading during this era.
Lee said the Oct. 10 market crash, which saw over $19 billion in crypto leverage liquidated in someday, was a significant catalyst.
“This sharp decline in token survivability could also be related to the broader market turmoil over the 12 months, which particularly affected the memecoin sector,” he added.
Lee said the variety of outages has skyrocketed in comparison with previous years. Over 1.3 million projects listed on GeckoTerminal failed in 2024, while only 2,584 failed in 2021.
More than 11.6 million tokens listed on CoinGecko’s GeckoTerminal have ceased lively trading over the past 12 months. Source: CoinGecko
Memecoins are among the many riskiest bets in crypto, and their success or failure could be a sign of how much risk investors are willing to take.
Memecoin launchpads are flooding the market
Another reason for the high variety of token failures is also the sheer volume of coins created in 2025 in comparison with other years.
GeckoTerminal shows that there have been 3 million tokens listed at the tip of 2024, but 20 million by the tip of 2025.
Lee points to the launch of the Solana Memecoin Launchpad pump.fun in January 2024 because the driving force behind the flood of latest projects.
“Easy adoption of tokens on Launchpads has led to a surge in memecoins and low-effort projects coming to market,” he said.
“Before the launch of pump.fun in 2024, the variety of cryptocurrency bugs was within the low six figures. Project bugs between 2021 and 2023 accounted for just 3.4% of all cryptocurrency bugs over the past five years.”
Memecoin market capitalization will increase until 2026
According to CoinMarketCap, memecoins had a powerful begin to the 12 months because the market capitalization rose from $38 billion on December 29 to $47.7 billion on January 5 before cooling off to around $43.7 billion on Monday.
During the identical period, Memecoin transaction volume increased by 300% from $2.17 billion to $8.7 billion. The transaction volume on Monday was around $3.69 billion; However, the metric saw a rise of greater than 34% on the day.
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