The cryptocurrency market witnessed one of its worst periods ever during the first quarter of 2025, with nearly 1.8 million digital currencies disappearing in just three months.
According to a recent report from the 'CoinGecko' platform, this loss represents nearly half of the recorded deaths of digital currencies over the past five years, indicating the scale of the crisis that the sector is experiencing.
Data indicates that nearly 25% of the currencies launched since 2021 are no longer trading.
This phenomenon is attributed to a combination of factors, most notably the sharp correction that followed the brief rise of Bitcoin after its launch in January 2025, as well as the rapid growth in the number of cryptocurrency generators, such as the platform 'Pump.fun', which made the creation of digital currencies an instantaneous and open process for all.
The 'Pump.fun' platform, which launched in early 2024, helped facilitate users' entry into the world of digital tokens without the need for technical expertise.
However, this oversimplification led to a flood of short-term and speculative currencies in the markets, contributing to a decline in the reliability of this sector and the accumulation of trading platforms with weak and unsustainable assets.
Since mid-2021, nearly 7 million digital tokens have been listed on the 'GeckoTerminal' platform, yet 52.7% of them, or more than 3.7 million tokens, were classified as failed projects and ceased trading completely.
Although the rate of failure accelerated significantly during 2024, the beginning of 2025 came with more severity, as 1.8 million digital currencies were classified as defunct by the end of March.
Compared to previous years, the rate of collapse of cryptocurrency projects was relatively limited.
In 2021, among more than 428,000 digital currencies listed, only 2,584 failed.
In 2022, the number of listed currencies rose to 724,706, of which 213,075 ceased trading.
In 2023, 835,183 digital currencies were issued, with about 245,000 of them ceasing to exist.
However, with the arrival of 2024, the number of new digital currencies exceeded the 3 million mark, and the Pump.fun platform played a pivotal role in this increase, becoming at one point the main driver of Solana's dominance in the decentralized platform market.
By the end of 2024, the number of failed digital currencies exceeded 1.3 million, paving the way for what was seen at the beginning of 2025.
During the first quarter of the year, approximately 1.93 million currencies were created, of which only about 117,000 survived, meaning that nearly 94% of these digital assets disappeared in a short period.