Crypto Carnage: 50%+ of Digital Assets Wiped Out in Market Purge

The great crypto extinction event is here—over half of all cryptocurrencies have flatlined since Bitcoin’s last bull run. Projects that promised ’the next Ethereum killer’ now rest in peace alongside 2017’s ICO graveyard.

Survival of the fittest? More like Darwin meets Wall Street. While blue-chips (BTC, ETH) weather the storm, altcoins got slaughtered faster than a leveraged long on a 50x futures contract. The ’build it and they will come’ crowd forgot one thing: liquidity always wins.

Here’s the cold truth: most chains were zombie projects from day one—VC-funded testnets with tokenomics designed to enrich insiders before the inevitable rug pull. The silver lining? A cleaner ecosystem... until the next hype cycle brings fresh bagholders.

In Brief

• More than 3.7 million cryptos have ceased trading since 2021.
• The first quarter of 2025 accounts for nearly 50% of all recorded failures.
• The launch of the Pump.fun platform contributed to the explosion in the number of crypto projects.
• Only 1% of memecoins created on Pump.fun manage to survive.

3.7 million projects disappeared in four years

How many cryptos have truly died over recent years? According to data from GeckoTerminal, of nearly 7 million cryptocurrencies listed since 2021, about 3.7 million have ceased trading and are considered bankrupt, representing a failure rate of 52.7%.

This trend dramatically accelerated between 2024 and early 2025, with a particular focus on the first quarter of 2025. This critical period coincided with Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, followed by a notable slowdown in the cryptocurrency market.

The explosion in the number of projects reflects a radical change in the ecosystem. In 2021, only 428,383 projects were listed on GeckoTerminal. In 2025, this number reached nearly 7 million, a sixteenfold increase in four years.

This exponential growth is largely explained by the arrival of platforms like Pump.fun, which democratized token creation.

These tools have allowed anyone to launch their own crypto without deep technical knowledge, flooding the market with memecoins and projects with low fundamental value.

2025, a dark year for cryptos

The first quarter of 2025 set a disastrous record with 1.8 million crypto projects ceasing all activity. This figure represents nearly half (49.7%) of all failures recorded between 2021 and 2025.

The year 2024 had already shown worrying signs with 1.4 million failed projects (37.7% of total failures). Paradoxically, that same year saw the birth of over 3 million new cryptos, illustrating the extreme volatility of the sector.

The situation was quite different previously. Between 2021 and 2023, failures remained limited to less than 250,000 projects per year.

This recent explosion is largely explained by the emergence of platforms that drastically simplified token creation. Pump.fun is the perfect example: this platform caused a wave of memecoins and projects without real fundamental value.

Even at its peak in November 2024, the token survival rate on Pump.fun was only 1.67%. This rate has since fallen below 1% for four consecutive weeks, reflecting investors’ growing disinterest in these speculative assets.

This massive crypto wipeout highlights the importance of thorough analysis before any investment in this volatile sector. While thousands of projects disappear every month, investors seem to gradually favor established digital assets over ephemeral high-risk tokens.

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