I've been reflecting on how much the crypto market has changed over the past 5 years. From 2021 to 2025, we've seen an incredible wave of new projects, but also an astonishing number of failed cryptocurrencies that simply disappeared.

When I think back to 2021, there was this crazy enthusiasm. NFTs, DeFi, yield farming... everyone was launching tokens with stellar promises. Some projects reached valuations in the billions within a few months. But you know how the story ends: when sentiment shifts and liquidity dries up, only the empty shells of what was once hype remain.

The interesting thing is defining what it really means for a coin to be dead. It’s not just when the price drops to zero. It’s when it disappears from major exchanges, when the team stops communicating on social media, when the code on GitHub is no longer touched. It’s when trading volume becomes practically nonexistent. Put these signals together and you realize the project is over.

Two cases come to mind that shook the market. Squid Game Token was everywhere at the end of 2021, right? Play-to-earn, tied to the Netflix series, promises of crazy returns. Then boom, the developers did a classic rug pull, the price plummeted from over $2800 almost to zero in a few days. A harsh lesson for those who believed in the promises.

Then there was the Terra and Luna saga in 2022. More complex, more painful. UST was an algorithmic stablecoin meant to maintain its peg to the dollar, but the mint-and-burn mechanism with LUNA was fragile. When big players started withdrawing, the peg broke. Attempts to save the system, even with billions in USDT swaps and Bitcoin reserve sales, failed. In the end, Luna’s hyperinflation wiped out billions in value. It was devastating.

But these are just two examples among many failed cryptocurrencies that marked these years. The causes? They are quite recurring. There are pure rug pulls, Ponzi scams that pay old investors with new money. Then there are teams that raise millions and disappear once they get the capital. I’ve seen projects with terrible tokenomics, where they release too many tokens too quickly, and inflation destroys all value before the project even takes off.

Other times, external factors come into play: a hack that drains liquidity, regulatory repression that forces delistings, a large-scale market crash that wipes out weak projects. And let’s not forget the community: when developers stop communicating, when promises aren’t kept, trust collapses and so does the project.

Looking ahead, I think the market is learning. With clearer regulation and more informed investors, maybe failed cryptocurrencies will become less common. Scams will be filtered out more easily, and those who do serious due diligence will avoid projects built solely on hype. This could mean fewer projects overall, but more robust ones, built on real utility and strong communities.

The projects that will survive are those offering concrete solutions, maintaining active development, communicating transparently. The sector is evolving toward quality rather than quantity, toward sustainability rather than FOMO. And honestly, I think that’s a positive thing for all of us.