Analysts at Memento Research analyzed 118 token launches (token generation event, TGE) since the beginning of the year and recorded massive declines. According to their data, 84.7% of assets are trading below their initial valuation.
Two-thirds of the tokens in the sample have lost more than 50% of their value, and 38% have a current market capitalization that is 70–90% below the initial level. The authors refer to this range as the "token graveyard zone" (highlighted in red on the chart). The authors rely on data from aggregators CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap, their own calculations, and data from public blockchains, with prices recorded as of December 20, 2025.
Large TGEs with inflated initial valuations performed particularly poorly. Out of 28 launches with an initial valuation (fully diluted value, FDV) of $1 billion or more, none are in profit. The median decline was about 81%.
The authors analyzed token launches in categories such as infrastructure projects (Infra, 46 launches in 2025), artificial intelligence (AI, 23 tokens), decentralized financial platforms (DeFi, 19 tokens), consumer services (Consumer, 14 tokens), gaming projects (Gaming, 6 tokens), stablecoins and related projects (Stablecoin, 4 tokens), decentralized futures platforms (Perp DEX, 3 tokens), data providers (Data, 2 tokens), and one token from a scientific crypto project (DeSi). For the 30 largest tokens, the median initial valuation was $1.58 billion, while for another 28, it was around $680 million.
The largest losses were recorded in infrastructure projects. They made up the bulk of the sample and showed an average decline of 72% to 82%. The DeFi sector performed relatively better, with 31.6% of tokens trading above their TGE price. The perp DEX segment stands out from the rest with an average increase of 213%, but the result is heavily skewed by the launch of the Aster DEX platform, whose token ASTER surged in price due to prolonged aggressive support from the largest crypto exchange Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao.
Projects with high initial valuations (FDV) failed to meet expectations and were revalued by the market significantly downward. This particularly affected infrastructure and AI-focused projects, which accounted for the majority of the decline.
Buying tokens at launch in 2025 meant betting on rare exceptions, the authors write. Most launches turned out to be unprofitable, and only assets with low initial valuations showed significantly better results. In this group, 40% of tokens traded above their launch price, and the median decline was about 26 percent. For all other segments, the average declines ranged from 70% to 83%, and there were almost no successful examples.
Thus, for most tokens in 2025, TGE was an unfortunate entry point. The median decline was about 70%, and in the case of inflated initial valuations, the market perceived the token launch as a local price peak, followed by a sharp decline.
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