I'm curious lately about how many cryptocurrencies have actually disappeared from the market since 2021. Looking at this five-year period, you can see a truly crazy increase in the number of new projects that appeared almost daily. FOMO, low interest rates, the NFT and DeFi boom — all driving a wave of innovation. Thousands of new coins entered the market with promises of revolution, some reaching valuations of billions within a few months. But then reality set in.

When sentiment cooled and liquidity dried up, how many of these ambitious projects actually survived? Honestly, most failed. Weak fundamentals, poor management, sometimes outright scams — all of this turned thousands of tokens into so-called dead cryptocurrencies. It’s not accidental — every dead coin has its story.

What defines a dead cryptocurrency? Primarily removal from major exchanges, which eliminates trading opportunities. Then there’s a long silence on official channels — no posts, no updates, no team activity. Abandoned repositories on GitHub, zero trading volume for months. Sometimes all these criteria are met at once, sometimes just two or three are enough to say the project is dead.

Let’s take two famous examples. At the end of 2021, Squid Game Token appeared thanks to the popularity of the Netflix series. Promises of play-to-earn and huge profits were made. Soon after, the developers pulled a classic rug pull — sold all their tokens and disappeared. The price dropped from over $2800 almost to zero. Investors lost everything, and the project was abandoned.

Even more spectacular was the collapse of Terra and its stablecoin UST in May 2022. The system was supposed to be genius — an algorithmic mechanism maintaining the peg to the dollar through LUNA. But when large withdrawals broke that peg, everything fell apart. Rescue attempts — exchanging billions of USDT, selling Bitcoin reserves — did nothing. When UST completely collapsed, people started burning it to mint LUNA, causing hyperinflation. Both coins went to zero, wiping out billions of dollars in value.

But how many cryptocurrencies have failed for exactly the same reasons? Rug pulls and Ponzi schemes are classics — developers raise money, promise the world, then disappear. Some projects raise millions, the team dissolves, and that’s it. Sometimes even well-intentioned people abandon a project when the funds run out or they realize the idea won’t work.

Tokenomics is another problem. Poorly designed tokenomics can destroy a project faster than any scandal. Too many tokens issued too quickly? Inflation kills the value. A token without clear utility? Nobody wants it. There’s a lack of balance between issuance, demand, and actual usefulness.

But it’s not always the team’s fault. Sometimes projects fail due to reasons beyond their control — hacking attacks, sudden regulatory bans, overall market crashes. In 2018 and 2022, we saw how many cryptocurrencies with weak reserves simply didn’t survive the bear market.

And finally, there’s the community aspect. Projects that go silent, don’t communicate, or fail to deliver on promises — these lose trust. When the community disperses, liquidity decreases, and exchanges delist the token. End of story.

Looking to the future, I wonder how many cryptocurrencies will survive? Probably fewer, but more solid ones. Better regulations, more informed investors — these should eliminate some scams. Projects that offer real utility, active development, and transparent communication have a chance. The rest? Likely to join the already dead coins. The industry is moving toward fewer but more resilient projects. This could be healthier for everyone.