Token graveyard: 99.99% of crypto tokens will eventually go to zero.

Original text: Zeneca

Compiled by: Big Claws | PANews Lobster

Depending on the source, the current number of cryptocurrencies ranges from 37 million to 120 million. The exact figure depends on the statistical methods and data sources, but getting bogged down in details at this scale is not particularly meaningful. No matter how you look at it, it's an astronomical number.

Over the past year, I've repeatedly emphasized the importance of concentrating holdings on a few key assets. Today, I'd like to share some data and research that supports this view and strategy.

Let's get straight to the point.

How many tokens are there exactly?

The answer depends on your data source and statistical methods; different platforms present different statistical data.

• CoinMarketCap: Cross-chain indexed token count exceeds 37 million.

• Dune Analytics: Tracks unique tokens on the main chain, approximately 74.5 million.

• Tangem: Citing on-chain data from January 2026, there are over 120 million [items/services] on the main network.

The difference stems from the definition of "token": should all deployed smart contracts be counted? Should only those with at least one transaction be counted? Or should only those still actively trading be counted? Each filtering criterion will yield different numbers.

However, all sources are highly consistent on three points:

• The growth rate is astonishing

• Most tokens are dead or nearing death.

• The real value is concentrated in a very small number of tokens.

The failure rate is close to 99.99%.

A statistic circulating online claims that 53.2% of cryptocurrency tokens have failed, citing a study published by CoinGecko in January 2026. While the study itself is sound, I believe it has several flaws:

• It only counts approximately 20 million tokens that entered the Gecko Terminal and had transaction records, excluding a large number of tokens that were created but never even launched and subsequently disappeared.

• It defines "no activity" as a failure; but in my opinion, extremely low activity coupled with a 99% price drop is also a failure.

As mentioned earlier, the actual number of tokens created is far higher than this, and the failure rate is also far higher than this.

Memento Research tracked 118 token generation events (TGEs) in 2025. These are typically projects with venture capital backing, teams and roadmaps, and that have gone through a formal TGE process (rather than randomly issued memecoins). Of these, 84.7% of the tokens are currently trading below their initial offering price—a figure that I still consider low.

The median token drop was 71%. The worst-performing projects launched with fully diluted valuations (FDV) of hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars, subsequently falling 85%-93%. If even the most well-resourced projects in the crypto market resulted in losses for 85% of buyers, what do you think will happen to the other 74.5 million tokens?

Let me tell you: Of the 74.5 million tokens tracked by Dune Analytics, about 500 have a market capitalization of over $10 million, which is 0.0007%.

The failure of cryptocurrencies is not limited to one category, but rather a complete collapse. As I said before: a good starting point is to assume that every token is heading towards zero, and then look for extremely rare exceptions.

• Meme Coin Failure: 99.67% of Pump.fu tokens never "graduate" (i.e., never reach a market capitalization of $90,000).

• ICO failures: 80% of ICOs in 2017 were scams, and by 2020, nearly 90% of the surviving tokens had fallen below their issue price.

• TGE failed: See the Memento Research data above.

• Airdrop Failed: Most of the airdropped tokens were sold off within hours of distribution and never recovered.

• VC project failures: High FDV, low circulation issuance has become a hallmark disaster of 2025.

• Creator token failures: Celebrity tokens, from politicians to internet celebrities, typically plummet by over 90% within days.

• AI-powered token failures: Hundreds of tokens were spawned by AI narratives in 2024-2025, the vast majority of which have fallen by more than 80% from their peak.

• Game token failures: The 2021-2022 Play-to-Earn craze created dozens of tokens, most of which are now worth less than a penny.

• L1 failure: Remember when Fantom was $3? When was Luna $100?

• L2 failures: Most L2 tokens underperformed ETH, and ETH itself also underperformed BTC.

• Secret issuance failed, fair launch failed, governance token failed, utility token failed.

This pattern applies to every category, every issuance mechanism, every narrative, and every market cycle. Almost all tokens tend to go to zero. Exceptions are extremely rare: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Hyperliquid, BNB, and a very few other projects.

That's the reality of this damn market.

Why are there so many coins?

Short answer: Creating tokens has never been easier or cheaper.

Pump.fun launched on Solana in January 2024, allowing anyone to create a token in 60 seconds—no programming required and with near-zero fees. Choose a name, upload a picture, click create, and you're done. You now own a cryptocurrency.

A research paper published in February 2026 analyzed one month's data from Pump.fun : In September 2025, 243,123 different wallet addresses created a total of 655,770 tokens, of which only 4,338 "graduated" and were listed on decentralized exchanges, a graduation rate of 0.63%.

By mid-2025, Pump.fun had deployed over 80% of Solana tokens, while Solana accounted for approximately 64-70% of all tokens ever created on all chains.

In other words, a single platform, deployed on a single blockchain, accounts for the majority of the total token creation in the crypto market. And 99.37% of those tokens fail before reaching a market capitalization of $90,000.

Where exactly is the money?

This is the most important part of your portfolio.

Bitcoin accounts for approximately 56 cents of every dollar in the crypto market. Combined with Ethereum and stablecoins, this represents 79%. The top 10 tokens together account for about 90% of the total market capitalization. The remaining approximately $230 billion is distributed among tens of millions of other tokens.

The average figures for tokens outside the top 100 are alarming: even if the $230 billion were evenly distributed among approximately 17,000 tracked tokens, the average market capitalization would only be around $13 million. This average is significantly inflated by hundreds of mid-cap tokens, making the median much, much lower. Millions of tokens have a market capitalization that is effectively zero.

Survival Funnel

A picture is worth a thousand words; it essentially encapsulates the entire content of this letter:

[Survival Funnel Diagram]

As time goes on, this polarization will only become more and more extreme.

Practical Implications

The market follows a power-law distribution.

The top ten cryptocurrencies hold over 90% of the total market capitalization. Holding Bitcoin and Ethereum means you hold the most important assets by market capitalization weight. This pattern has held true for many years.

Token creation ≠ value creation

Tens of millions of tokens exist, but the vast majority are created to make money for the creators, rather than for the buyers.

The haystack grew larger and larger, but the number of needles did not increase.

Finding legitimate projects with real-world applications is getting harder every month. The signal-to-noise ratio is worse than ever. More tokens don't equal more opportunities; quite the opposite—it means more noise and harder-to-grasp opportunities.

Survivorship bias is everywhere

You only heard about Meme Coin, which increased 1000 times in value, but you didn't hear about the 655,000 tokens issued in the same month that went to zero. Success stories filled X's (Twitter) news feed, while failures went completely silent.

Liquidity is the real filter

CoinGecko tracks approximately 17,000 tokens, with 415 listed on Binance. The difference between "existence" and "substantial liquidity" is enormous.

Finally, I'd like to say...

The current number of tokens is between 37 million and 120 million; the exact number is not important. What matters is the distribution pattern.

More than 99.99% of tokens have actually failed.

Of all the tokens created, approximately 500 have a market capitalization exceeding $10 million. 99.37% of PumpFun tokens failed to "graduate." 85% of TGE projects issued in 2025 traded below their initial price.

Data from all sources is highly consistent.

I'm not writing this to scare you away from the crypto market, but rather to help you understand this context and make wiser decisions about how you allocate your capital and attention. Opportunities still exist in the crypto market, but they reside in a select few assets and protocols, not in the millions of tokens created to extract wealth from unsuspecting buyers.

What I've always said is that for almost everyone, the best strategy is to buy Bitcoin regularly with a fixed amount (DCA), maybe a few other tokens, and then wait.

While altcoins may outperform significantly at certain stages, most people will lose money while searching for a needle in a haystack, so it's better to stick with mainstream assets.

Hopefully, this data will support this position and perhaps help a reader realize that treasure hunting is not for them.

Finally, even if you really want to find those gems or that needle, this data should at least reinforce the idea that you should generally only use a small percentage of your portfolio for this task, and instead put the majority (over 80%) of your funds in assets like BTC, ETH, SOL, and HYPE. If you're as adventurous as I am, you can also add ZEC and TAO.