Crypto death toll hits 3.7m since 2021, with 50% of coins wiped out post-Pump.fun era, research shows

Greater than 3.7 million cryptocurrency tokens have failed since 2021, with almost half of these collapses occurring in the course of the Pump.fun-driven memecoin craze.

Thousands and thousands of tokens have failed since 2021, with almost half of these collapses recorded in 2024 and early 2025, in response to new research by crypto pricing platform GeckoTerminal.

In accordance with the analysis, a complete of 1.8 million tokens failed in Q1 this yr alone, making up 49.7% of all token failures recorded between 2021 and 2025. In 2024, almost 1.4 million tasks additionally went below, accounting for 37.7% of failures. Collectively, the 2 years noticed many of the crypto market’s token shutdowns.

“This sharp decline in token survivability could also be linked to broader market turbulence, significantly following Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, which coincided with a downturn within the crypto market.”

GeckoTerminal

The variety of new crypto tasks has additionally surged. As an example, simply over 428,000 tokens have been listed on crypto value aggregator platforms in 2021. By 2025, that quantity had jumped to almost seven million. The researchers say a lot of this development “could be attributed to the launch of Pump.enjoyable, which simplified the method of making tokens, resulting in a flood of meme cash and low-effort tasks getting into the market.”

Earlier than Pump.enjoyable launched in 2024, the variety of mission failures was considerably decrease. From 2021 to 2023, failures remained within the low six digits. Mixed, these three years accounted for simply 12.6% of whole token deaths, the info reveals.

GeckoTerminal defined that it defines “lifeless tokens” as these that are now not actively traded, noting that solely tokens that had “one commerce or extra” earlier than going defunct have been thought-about.