Dead souls: Why cryptocurrencies disappear from the market

​The cryptocurrency market has experienced multiple waves of rises and falls. Alongside the successes of Bitcoin and other popular digital assets, thousands of coins have failed, remaining on the sidelines of history.

According to Coinopsy, more than 3,000 coins have disappeared over the years of the crypto market's existence, and this process shows no sign of stopping. Binance’s founder Changpeng Zhao recently stated that only 5% of cryptocurrencies will survive. The rest will either lose value or become obsolete.

Whether due to fraud, lack of interest, or irrelevance, dead coins are those tokens that no longer exist meaningfully. Among them are some notable names, including BitConnect, TerraUSD, OneCoin, and NEM (XEM).

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What are dead coins ?

Dead cryptocurrencies are digital assets that have lost their value and liquidity. Popular -cryptocurrency resource 99Bitcoins evaluates dead coins based on six parameters:

- Inactive development: No updates to the GitHub repository for six months.

- Inactive social media account: No activity on X in the past year.

- Low trading volume.

- Not indexed: The coin is not listed on CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap, or other major indexes.

- Not listed on major exchanges.

- No available website.

On average, 947 cryptocurrencies lose their relevance each year on cryptocurrency exchanges. This process accelerated with the introduction of Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) in 2017. ICOs, similar to an Initial Public Offering (IPO), were used to raise capital for launching new cryptocurrencies. In 2017, the number of available cryptocurrencies increased from 29 to about 850. According to CoinMarketCap, as of February 2025, there are around 10,000 cryptocurrencies, of which 3,322 have failed.

The rise of meme coins also contributed to the surge of failed cryptocurrencies. Meme coins are cryptocurrencies with no real utility, created for entertainment or speculative purposes. Despite investor attention, only a few projects have survived, and approximately 3% of all dead coins are meme coins.

The most notable cryptocurrency failures

BitConnect (BCC) — The largest scam in the industry

BitConnect (BCC) became a symbol of fraud in the cryptocurrency industry. In 2017, the platform promised users returns of up to 40% per month using a "unique trading algorithm." However, in 2018, U.S. regulators identified BitConnect as a Ponzi scheme, and the BCC token crashed from $400 to a few cents. The founders disappeared, making it one of the largest scams in cryptocurrency history.

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OneCoin (ONE) — A global financial pyramid

Founded by Ruja Ignatova, OneCoin was marketed as a "Bitcoin killer" and attracted millions of investors worldwide. Unlike real cryptocurrencies, OneCoin had no blockchain, and all transactions were centrally controlled. In 2019, Ignatova disappeared, and U.S. authorities charged the project with a $4 billion fraud.

TerraUSD (UST) — The biggest stablecoin crash

In May 2022, TerraUSD (UST), an algorithmic stablecoin embedded in several CeFi platforms and DeFi protocols, experienced one of the largest crashes in cryptocurrency history. Despite its stability, the peg of UST to the U.S. dollar was attacked, leading to massive losses and the collapse of the coin.

The UST peg failure occurred after a large sale of tokens on the decentralized stablecoin exchange Curve, which many believe was a deliberate attempt to destabilize the entire Terra ecosystem. This led to a chain of events resulting in the project’s collapse.

After the crash, TerraUSD was removed from major cryptocurrency exchanges, and the Terra ecosystem lost its liquidity. As a result, over $40 billion in market capitalization was wiped out in just a few days, making it the largest stablecoin asset failure in history.

NEM (XEM) — From Top 10 to oblivion

NEM was one of the top ten cryptocurrencies in 2017. However, in recent years, the asset has faced numerous challenges that led to its loss of popularity. One significant event was the 2018 hack of Japanese exchange Coincheck, where $400 million worth of XEM was stolen. Although the incident was not related to vulnerabilities in the NEM network, it severely damaged trust in the cryptocurrency and its ecosystem. Today, the project is nearly unused, and its market capitalization has dropped by 99% from its all-time high.

NFT cemetery

The digital asset market also has its own graveyard for non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Technically, it is an address for burning — sending an NFT to this address makes it permanently unavailable. The address is 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000dEaD. You can monitor its activity via the Etherscan block explorer. As of March 2025, over 5,000 NFTs have been sent to this address, with a total value exceeding $50 million.

The reasons for burning NFTs vary. For example, token #685 from the CryptoPunks collection was accidentally burned during an attempt to wrap it, when it was worth approximately $129,000. Token #1626 from Bored Ape Yacht Club was burned to transfer it to the Bitcoin blockchain via the Ordinals protocol; its value at the time of burning was approximately $169,000.

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NFTs from other well-known collections, including Doodle, 0N1 Force, and Sappy Seals, have also been sent to this address.

Conclusion

The history of cryptocurrencies is not only about successes but also about tens of thousands of failures. Many projects have disappeared due to fraud, lack of liquidity, or obsolescence. In the future, the proportion of “dead coins” will only increase as the market continues to evolve, and weak projects fail to withstand competition.

As Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, said, only 5% of cryptocurrencies will survive, and these figures are confirmed by history. To avoid falling into the trap of "dead coins," investors must carefully analyze projects, their utility, and their teams. In the crypto world, any questionable project can quickly become worthless or disappear entirely — and recovering what was lost may never be possible.