Extreme volatility in the 2025 cryptocurrency market led to a shock outcome in which more than 11.6 million projects, centred on memecoins, failed. It is the largest failure scale in the history of the cryptocurrency market.

On Jan. 12, Cointelegraph, a blockchain outlet, reported that CoinGecko research analyst Shaun Paul Lee said in a report that 7.7 million tokens stopped active trading on GeckoTerminal in the fourth quarter of 2025. The figure surged from a year earlier, showing token survival rates are rapidly deteriorating.

Lee pointed to a market plunge on Oct. 10 last year as a main cause. About $19 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated in a single day, sharply widening market volatility, and vulnerable projects dropped out in large numbers, he said. "Volatility that persisted throughout the year and overheating in the memecoin sector in particular greatly reduced the chances of token survival," he said.

In fact, the number of projects listed on GeckoTerminal jumped from about 1.3 million in 2024 to 20 million in 2025. Lee cited the emergence of Solana (SOL)-based memecoin launch platform pump.fun as a factor behind the surge. Launched in January 2024, the platform made it easy to issue tokens and led to mass production of low-quality, short-lived projects, which in turn raised the failure rate, he said.

The memecoin market's market capitalisation jumped from $38 billion on Dec. 29 to $47.7 billion on Jan. 5, but later slowed somewhat to around $43.7 billion. Trading volume was also volatile. Over the same period, memecoin trading volume plunged from $21.7 billion to $8.7 billion, then recovered to $36.9 billion as of Monday, rising more than 34 percent from the previous day.

Pump.fun, which led the memecoin issuance boom, posted its lowest monthly revenue in 2025, data showed. That suggests growth across the memecoin market has entered a slowing phase.

Experts said if indiscriminate issuance continues in the memecoin market, where barriers to entry have become excessively low, rising failure rates and investor fatigue could worsen further. They stressed the need for selective investment and improvements to market structure.