Behind the wealth-creation stories in crypto, countless pitfalls are hidden. According to the latest CoinGecko data, from mid-2021 to the end of 2025, approximately 20.2 million new coins were created in the market, but more than half have already become "zombie coins"—with no trading activity whatsoever.

The most extreme case is 2025. Just last year alone, 1,160 coins died, accounting for 86.3% of the total number of "defunct coins" over the past five years. To put it plainly, more coins died last year than in the other four years combined. This number is truly suffocating.

Why did they die so fast? CoinGecko analyst Shaun Paul Lee provided the answer—the explosive growth of low-cost, low-barrier meme coins and experimental projects. Particularly with the rise of token issuance platforms like Pump.fun, anyone can easily create a coin. Almost no technical requirements, almost no capital barriers, resulting in just about anyone launching tokens.

This seemingly lowered the participation threshold, but the real problem is bigger—the vast majority of such tokens have no technical foundation, no real development teams, and no long-term planning whatsoever. They are pure speculative assets. Some coins even disappear completely after just a few transactions.

Q4 2025 has been dubbed the "dark moment" in crypto by many. Hundreds or thousands of coins failed within just three months. This not only reflects market bubble inflation, but also demonstrates just how high the risks are for blindly participating in such projects.