Due to the turmoil in the virtual currency market, the number of meme coins decreased sharply last year in particular, and the number of failed virtual currency projects exceeded 11.6 million in 2025, the highest level in a single year.
The fourth quarter of 2025 was the worst period, with 7.7 million tokens listed on the Gecko terminal ceasing active trading during the period, according to a report published Friday by CoinGecko research analyst Sean Paul Lee.
Lee said the October 10 market crash, in which more than $19 billion of crypto leverage was liquidated in one day, was a key trigger.
“This sharp decline in token viability may be related to the widespread market turmoil throughout the year, which particularly affected the memecoin sector,” he added.
Lee said the number of failures had skyrocketed from the previous year. In 2024, over 1.3 million projects listed on Geckoterminal failed, while in 2021, only 2,584 projects failed.
More than 11.6 million tokens listed on CoinGecko’s Gecko terminal ceased active trading last year. sauce: CoinGecko
Memecoin is one of the riskiest bets in cryptocurrencies, and its success or failure can be an indicator of how much risk investors are willing to take.
Meme coin launchpads flood the market
Another reason for the high token failure rate could be that a large amount of coins were created in 2025 compared to other years.
According to Geckoterminal, there were 3 million tokens listed at the end of 2024, and 20 million at the end of 2025.
Lee points to the launch of Solana meme coin Launchpad Pump.fun in January 2024 as a driving force behind the plethora of new projects.
“The ease of launching tokens on a launch pad has led to a proliferation of low-effort meme coins and market entry projects,” he said.
“Prior to the launch of pump.fun in 2024, the number of crypto failures was in the low six digits. Project failures from 2021 to 2023 accounted for just 3.4% of all crypto failures over the past five years.”
Meme coin market capitalization will rise towards 2026
Meme coins are off to a strong start this year, with their market capitalization soaring from $38 billion on Dec. 29 to $47.7 billion by Jan. 5, before cooling to about $43.7 billion as of Monday, according to CoinMarketCap.
Related: Meme coin loses momentum, Pump.fun hits lowest monthly revenue in 2025
Over the same period, memecoin trading volume surged 300% from $2.17 billion to $8.7 billion. Trading volume on Monday was approximately $3.69 billion. However, the indicator for the day recorded an increase of more than 34%.
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