For much of 2025, a simple rule holds true: If a new coin comes to market, its price will likely fall.
Memento Research tracked 118 token creation events last year, and its data shows that about 85% of tokens are currently trading below their original valuations. The median token price is down more than 70% from where it started.
This is in stark contrast to the last bull cycle in 2021, when many high-profile coins including MATIC, FTM, and AVAX soared upon launch, buoyed by the frothy altcoin market and insatiable risk appetite.
A tough year, a new year
This weakness emerged early and continues into 2025. Coins that debut on major centralized exchanges, including Binance, often sell off almost immediately. An exchange listing is no longer a signal of momentum but increasingly a warning sign.
Several factors contributed to the poor performance. Since the memecoin bubble burst in February, the altcoin market has remained in the doldrums for much of the year, save for a brief surge in September. Bitcoin continues to outperform, leaving little room for speculative moves into new coins.
This environment shapes traders’ behavior. Instead of holding positions for the long term, many people choose to take profits quickly and move elsewhere, unwilling to be the last holders in a falling market.
Teams that expected their tokens to help guide the ecosystem instead found themselves defending a graph that could only move one way. Even well-capitalized, high-profile projects have struggled to escape early selling pressure. plasma For example, after hitting $2.00 on its debut in September, it is currently trading below $0.20. Meanwhile, Monad has lost approximately 40% of its value since the token went live in November.
Too many brackets, too little alignment
A major question is who ultimately owns these coins.
Large exchange distribution programs, extensive airdrops, and direct selling platforms achieve what they were designed to do: maximize reach and liquidity. But they also flooded the market with holders who had little connection to the underlying product.
This dynamic marks a shift from earlier cycles, when tight-knit communities formed in Discord groups around token offerings and exchange listings. Exchanges and issuance platforms often hold a large portion of the supply until 2025, which is then airdropped or sold in tranches. Many coins quickly fall out of their intended ecosystem and are held by traders focused on short-term price movements rather than usage.
This does not make those traders villains. It just means their motivations are different. Once supply starts flowing, it’s difficult for a project to regain control of its narrative.
For years, the industry has assumed that early liquidity would eventually translate into long-term value. In 2025, this assumption is shattered.
Tokens without a clear purpose
Another disturbing fact is that many tokens simply don’t have enough uses.
In order for a token to retain value, it needs to be the core of the product—something users rely on, not just something they trade. In practice, this means demand is driven by usage rather than marketing.
Instead, many teams issue tokens before these conditions arise, hoping that the utility and community will follow suit. In a market increasingly focused on price, this gap has proven fatal.
This was less of an issue during the 2017 initial coin offering (ICO) cycle, when many token launches were little more than white papers. The novelty of the ICO model and the generally bullish altcoin market make fundamentals easier to overlook. In 2025, with altcoins largely underperforming Bitcoin, the dominant strategy becomes taking short-term gains from new coins and then switching back to Bitcoin.
Regulation still casts a shadow
Design choices were also influenced by what wasn’t happening in Washington.
Mike Dudas, managing partner of venture capital firm 6MV, told CoinDesk that the failure of the U.S. Market Structure Act to pass in 2025 has left open the question of whether tokens can carry equity-like rights. Without this clarity, teams avoid using features that might attract regulatory scrutiny.
The result has been a wave of cautious, stripped-down tokens — tradable assets with few clear value propositions. To avoid legal risks, many issuers also avoid providing holders with a clear long-term reason to own a token.
what happens next
If 2025 exposed what wasn’t working, it also clarified what many teams are aiming for now.
A recurring theme highlighted by Dudas is that exchange-led offerings are often detrimental to long-term success. Binance’s listing in particular became a bearish signal, with many newly listed coins selling off almost immediately.
The problem is structural. Large CEX allocation programs, airdrops, and direct sales platforms optimize for liquidity and trading volume, rather than adjust. When a significant portion of the supply is given away to traders who are unlikely to use the product, selling pressure is inevitable.
In response, more teams may start experimenting with usage-based distribution models, where tokens are earned through demonstrated participation rather than being widely distributed at launch, an approach companies like Optimism and Blur have taken in the past. This could mean tying rewards to paying fees, meeting minimum activity thresholds, running infrastructure, or participating in governance – ensuring that users who truly rely on the product receive tokens.
This method is slower and more difficult to execute, but is increasingly considered necessary as the CEX airdrop model loses credibility.
Necessary reset
The point of 2025 is not that tokens are broken. The problem is, misaligned coins cannot survive in an unforgiving market.
Data from Memento Research clearly shows this. Most new tokens lose value not because demand for the cryptocurrency disappears, but because issuance, ownership, and utility are out of sync. Tokens become liquid before they are needed, are widely held before communities form, and are actively traded before they play a meaningful role in a product.
The next phase of the market is unlikely to bring a marketing frenzy. Instead, it will support restraint, clearer incentive design, and tokens whose value is tied to actual use—not just the moment they start trading.