13.4 Million Altcoins Dead as Regulation Strips Tokens of Rights

CoinGecko data shows 53.2% of cryptocurrencies listed on GeckoTerminal had failed by the end of 2025, and more than 13.4 million tokens have "died" since 2021. The collapse accelerated in 2025, when 11.6 million tokens failed — 86.3% of all failures recorded since 2021.

Listings surged from about 428,000 projects in 2021 to 20.2 million by 2025, while annual failures climbed from 2,584 in 2021 to 213,075 in 2022, 245,049 in 2023 and 1.38 million in 2024 before the 2025 spike. Certain niches fared worse: music and video tokens failed at rates close to 75%.

Crypto analyst Alex Krüger says outdated regulation forced teams to strip tokens of enforceable rights, arguing that the SEC’s use of the Howey Test and enforcement-led oversight pushed projects into a corner. "Most tokens ever created are worthless by design because of outdated regulations," he wrote.

United States

altcoins, coingecko, geckoterminal, token failures, token rights, howey test, sec, crypto regulation, alex krüger, music tokens