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- In Q1 2025, around 1.8 million crypto tokens have failed since 2021, which is over 3.7 million.
- Political events like Trump’s inauguration have contributed to increased volatility in the crypto market.
- The rise of low-effort tokens, fueled by Pump.fun, has significantly impacted the crypto market’s stability.
The crypto market has suffered losses exceeding 3.7 million tokens since the start of 2021. A majority of these failures happened during the memecoins rush which was ignited by Pump.fun. These shutdowns were fueled by the spike in new projects and the emergence of low-effort tokens. Failed tokens total almost 1.8 million in the first quarter of 2025.
Source: CoinGecko
Research by GeckoTerminal on cryptocurrency pricing reveals that 49.7% of the total tokens that will fail within the period 2021 to 2025 are likely to do so in Q1 2025. Last year, 2024, witnessed as many as 1.4 million project failures, or 37.7% of all such failures. These two years alone account for the majority of the crypto market’s token falls indicating a change.
Crypto market volatility could therefore be a result of general events currently going on in the world, such as the inauguration of Donald Trump in January 2025. This situation was coupled with the volatility of the political environment and, specifically, the identified movement that affected the status of many tokens in the crypto market. This link between political changes and the decline in the market emphasizes the fragility of the cryptocurrency industry.
Impact of Pump.fun
There has been a drastic increase in the number of initial coin offerings in the last few years. Currently, there are about 428,000 tokens that are listed on other cryptocurrency price aggregator platforms as of the year 2021. As for 2021, this figure rose to almost seven million, which indicates the significant impact of Pump.fun. It made token creation relatively easy, which enabled the creation of numerous meme assets and new projects that were hardly sustainable.
Investors witnessed a few failures of tokens prior to Pump.fun’s emergence. Thus, the number of failures remained in the low six-digit range between 2021 and 2023 and contributed to only 12.6% of token shutdowns. However, after the emergence of Pump.fun in 2024. The situation changed drastically with the increasing popularity of a huge number of new tokens without sufficient preparation and funding for their further development.
Crypto’s Dead Tokens
GeckoTerminal describes “dead tokens” simply as tokens that are no longer traded. First, tokens with only one trade in the specified time frame are only included. And tokens with fewer than one trade are considered non-trade tokens.
Cryptocurrencies continue to see an unfortunate trend of token failure, as over 3.7 million tokens have failed since 2021. This is because of the increase in low-effort projects, as depicted by the platform Pump.fun, contributing to the market fluctuation. Due to such contingencies, the future of the crypto market is unpredictable, and investors need to be wary of the risks involved in investing in the sector.
