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Last year’s instability in the cryptocurrency market had a significant impact on memecoins, resulting in more than 11.6 million crypto project failures in 2025, which marks the highest figure ever recorded in a single year.
The final quarter of 2025 ranked as one of the most challenging, with 7.7 million tokens on GeckoTerminal no longer being actively traded during that time, as stated in a report from CoinGecko research analyst Shaun Paul Lee published on Friday.
Lee saidthe October 10 market crash, which involved more$19 billion in cryptocurrency leverageliquidated within a single day, served as a major trigger.
“The significant drop in token survival rates could be connected to the overall market instability during the year, which had a major impact on the memecoin category,” he noted.
The count of failures hadskyrocketed from previous years, as stated by Lee. More than 1.3 million projects listed on GeckoTerminal experienced failure in 2024, compared to just 2,584 in 2021.
Memecoins represent some of the most volatile investments in the cryptocurrency market, and their performance can reflect a broader trend or sentiment.how much riskinvestors are ready to accept.
Memecoin launch platforms overwhelm the market
Another possible explanation for the elevated rate of token failures might be the massive number of coins launched in 2025 when compared to other years.
GeckoTerminal indicates that 3 million tokens were listed by the end of 2024, increasing to 20 million by the end of 2025.
Lee highlights the introduction of Solanamemecoin launchpad pump.funin January 2024 as a key factor in the surge of new initiatives.
“The simplicity of launching tokens on launchpads has resulted in an increase of low-effort memecoins and ventures entering the market,” he stated.
Prior to the release of pump.fun in 2024, the number of cryptocurrency failures was in the low six figures. Failures of projects between 2021 and 2023 accounted for only 3.4% of all cryptocurrency failures in the last five years.
Memecoin market value surges into 2026
Memecoins began the year with a robust performance asmarket capitalization jumped to $38 billionfrom December 29 to $47.7 billion by January 5, then decreasing to approximately $43.7 billion as of Monday,according to CoinMarketCap.
Related: Pump.fun experiences its lowest monthly income in 2025 as memecoins start to decline.
In the same timeframe, memecoin transaction volumes increased by 300%, rising from $2.17 billion to $8.7 billion. As of Monday, transaction volumes are approximately $3.69 billion; nevertheless, the figure has seen a rise of over 34% for the day.
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