2026-01-13 14:32:54

The Harsh Reality of the Crypto Market: Half of the Tokens Have Gone Out of Business

CoinGecko's latest data is not optimistic. Among the tokens launched since 2021, more than half have ceased activity, with approximately 13.4 million projects completely vanished. And this is not even the most heartbreaking part — from the beginning of 2025 to now, the market's wave of death has erupted intensively, eliminating millions of projects in just this year.

This reflects not just market volatility but a fierce survival competition. A large number of air coins and scam projects with no real application collapse instantly when the market cools down, and investors have learned to be more cautious in identifying projects. In such an environment, projects that survive often have genuine technical foundations and ecological support.

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TradFiRefugee

· 01-13 15:00

Wow, 13.4 million projects have died? How many retail investors have been lost?

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DAOplomacy

· 01-13 14:57

ngl the "survival of the fittest" narrative here is kinda convenient cover for what's basically path dependency playing out... sure, 13.4M dead projects sounds brutal, but arguably the real question is whether our incentive structures ever aligned properly to begin with. most of those were doomed from governance primitives alone.

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MercilessHalal

· 01-13 14:56

Half of the tokens have been released, which is not surprising; it was long overdue for a reshuffle.

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BrokenDAO

· 01-13 14:50

Half of the tokens have died. Isn't this a textbook case of bad money driving out good? The early incentive mechanism of "issuing tokens to raise funds" itself is a design flaw. It's good to say that investors should "learn to carefully discern," but frankly, the trust cost is too high—every new project requires repeated verification of technical details. This inefficiency actually exposes the problems within the entire governance system. The ones that truly survive are often not the most technically advanced, but those who persist the longest in the game-theoretic equilibrium. It's just survivor bias.

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MetaverseLandlord

· 01-13 14:48

This data is really incredible. 13.4 million projects just disappeared... I was wondering why there are so many scam coins. --- It's not surprising that half are eliminated. The cleanup should have happened earlier; only the genuine ones remain. --- Starting in 2025 and already dying so many? How will it go from here? --- Honestly, it's still too many greedy projects. Without real skills, they'll die sooner or later. --- Investors' eyes are really sharp now; they can't be fooled anymore. --- If you can't survive, you can't survive. Anyway, the few I bet on are still here.

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FlyingLeek

· 01-13 14:41

These numbers sound pretty scary, but to be honest, it should have been like this a long time ago. Those pure air coins deserve to die.

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