Is the Crypto Industry Getting More Serious?

Crypto has had its fair share of fame, with more institutional adoption being witnessed, and more people trading cryptocurrencies by the day. It seems that most irrelevant projects, merely riding the crypto wave, have failed to make it to 2024.

As per the latest CoinGecko report, more than half of the cryptocurrencies listed on the platform since CoinGecko have died.

To be precise, out of over 24,000 cryptocurrencies listed on CoinGecko since 2014, 14,039 have died – which means than more than half of cryptocurrencies, deemed of no interest to users after initial hype, died a quiet death.

The reason is simple.

Most customers are interested only in projects that offer utility and value to them over a long period of time. This long-term approach of the crypto community has made shillcoins irrelevant, with most of them quickly disappearing from the market.

 

Source: CoinGecko

The 2020- 2021 bull run ironically turned out to be most damaging as most dead cryptocurrencies were listed during this period.

7,530 cryptocurrencies listed during the 2020- 21 bull run are now dead.

These account for 53.6% of all dead cryptocurrencies on CoinGecko.

However, this was not triggered for no reason...

The hype and overenthusiasm during the period of bull run made the deployment of tokens easier.

• It was easy for anyone to publish a whitepaper and drop a token.
   
• Venture capital funds were throwing cash into crypto projects, pumping tokens up and cashing out.
   
• The regulation around digital assets was minimal, leading to several non-consequential projects getting launched.
   
• Memecoins, in particular, gained currency. However, most of these projects got abandoned midway.
   
• Projects turned out to be scams or rug pulls or got abandoned midway.

The recent period, when cryptocurrency came into its own, has not been one of days full of wine and roses.

• More than 1,000 cryptocurrencies died each in 2018 and 2019.
• 2022 witnessed more than 3,500 cryptocurrencies dying.

It is obvious that several projects were merely interesting in capitalising on the general hype surrounding the cryptocurrency sector, offering no long-term value. The period also saw several bankruptcies, scandals, and hacks.

In contrast, 2023 was a much better year or the industry as only 289 cryptocurrencies died among 4,000 listings. It's the same year when regulation of virtual assets got stricter.

We can observe that the sector is getting more serious now as only genuine projects are gaining currency among the crypto community.

A dawn of a new era of maturity seems to be beginning for the crypto industry now.

However, this was not triggered for no reason...

The hype and overenthusiasm during the period of bull run made the deployment of tokens easier.

The Largest of Crypto Deaths

As mentioned above, most coins’ failure happened back in 2021 – but the question remains: why?

• Regulation was still minimal at the time.

• It was super easy for anyone to drop a token with a whitepaper.

• This in turn resulted in rug pulls, meme tokens, scams.

• Early crypto adopters used ICO's as an easy fix to be getting rich very quick.

• With interest rates close to 0% in 2021 - cash was flowing like crazy and institutional investment was booming.

• Venture capital funds were throwing cash into crypto projects, pumping tokens up and cashing out.

• Then the 2021 bear market hit, which cleared out all the doubts in the markets.

• That's one of the key attributes of a bear market - if a smaller project can survive - this shows resilience, real investment and real development.
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The number of cryptocurrency failures by year of launch are:

 

Source: CoinGecko

What Happens Now?

It is no secret that the cryptocurrency sector has been in the spotlight recently, specifically with the Wall Street welcoming the spot Bitcoin ETFs only the last week.

Projects which show resilience in the face of challenges have become popular among both institutional and retail consumers, inviting substantial investment and adoption.