Crypto’s great extinction of 2025.
By Maxime Laurent · 2026-01-15 17:00
Crypto’s great extinction of 2025.
Half the tokens died this year, crushed by low quality, easy launches, and a brutal market cleanup.
I read this and just nodded. No drama. Just reality.
According to CoinGecko, a record 11.6 million tokens vanished in 2025. Let that sink in: one out of two assets ever listed on the site simply stopped existing. Not sleeping. Not “building quietly”. Dead.
The most savage moment? Q4. 7.7 million tokens wiped out, echoes of the October correction. When liquidity leaves, masks fall. Most of these tokens were never meant to survive a real winter.
The root cause is obvious. The barrier to entry collapsed. With tools like Pump Fun and similar toys, retail launched 20+ million tokens without writing a single line of code. Compare that to 2021: fewer than 500,000 tokens. Same market, wildly different noise level.
This wasn’t innovation. It was inflation of junk. And markets always clean junk. Slowly at first. Then all at once. C’est le ménage.
What survives after this kind of purge usually matters more. Less hype, fewer copies, more gravity. Painful? Yes. Healthy? Absolutely. 🌊
#crypto #altcoins #markets #CoinGecko #tokens #cleansing #CryptoFriture
Half the tokens died this year, crushed by low quality, easy launches, and a brutal market cleanup.
I read this and just nodded. No drama. Just reality.
According to CoinGecko, a record 11.6 million tokens vanished in 2025. Let that sink in: one out of two assets ever listed on the site simply stopped existing. Not sleeping. Not “building quietly”. Dead.
The most savage moment? Q4. 7.7 million tokens wiped out, echoes of the October correction. When liquidity leaves, masks fall. Most of these tokens were never meant to survive a real winter.
The root cause is obvious. The barrier to entry collapsed. With tools like Pump Fun and similar toys, retail launched 20+ million tokens without writing a single line of code. Compare that to 2021: fewer than 500,000 tokens. Same market, wildly different noise level.
This wasn’t innovation. It was inflation of junk. And markets always clean junk. Slowly at first. Then all at once. C’est le ménage.
What survives after this kind of purge usually matters more. Less hype, fewer copies, more gravity. Painful? Yes. Healthy? Absolutely. 🌊
#crypto #altcoins #markets #CoinGecko #tokens #cleansing #CryptoFriture
Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only and not financial advice.