Meme Coin Carnage: 11.6M Crypto Projects Collapse in 2025 Amid Market Turmoil
The cryptocurrency market witnessed its bloodiest year on record in 2025, with 11.6 million projects failing—a staggering collapse fueled by October's liquidity crisis and speculative excess. Meme coins bore the brunt, their inherent volatility magnified by low-barrier launchpads that flooded the market with fragile tokens.
Q4 became a graveyard for 7.7 million projects, representing 66% of annual failures. The dominoes began falling on October 10th when $19 billion in Leveraged positions vaporized within 24 hours. 'This wasn't just a correction—it was Darwinism for weak protocols,' remarked CoinGecko analyst Shaun Paul Lee.
The wreckage reveals two truths: First, the meme coin bubble had reached critical mass, with derivatives like DOGE, SHIB, and Pepe serving as canaries in the coal mine. Second, infrastructure matters—projects lacking real utility or exchange support (particularly those absent from Binance, Coinbase, and Bybit) faced instant annihilation when liquidity dried up.
