As the tide recedes, we see who's been naked. The true nature of the market structure will finally be revealed at the end of the year. For most crypto investors, 2025 is likely to be a year of "new coin death," a year they'll likely never forget. Against the backdrop of tightening liquidity and rapidly cooling risk appetite, the valuations of newly issued tokens have been squeezed across the board, with infrastructure and gaming, the two most sought-after sectors in the past, suffering the most.
Market funds are no longer paying for distant growth stories and highly diluted valuations, but are instead clearly flowing back to more mature crypto core infrastructure with cash flow potential and network effects. This not only marks the end of the speculative cycle but also reflects that the crypto market is entering a more realistic, fundamental-driven phase. This article, based on on-chain data reports from OX Research , reviews the true flow of funds at the end of the year from two perspectives: index performance and actual returns of new tokens.
Crypto assets come under pressure as risk aversion intensifies.
Looking at the overall market, Bitcoin (BTC) performed almost flat last week, significantly underperforming the Nasdaq, S&P 500, and gold. This divergence widened further around December 18: most crypto sectors declined in tandem, but US stocks remained stable, indicating increased risk aversion towards crypto assets rather than simply a weakening macroeconomy.
Among the various sub-indices, the decentralized exchange (DEX) sector performed the best, followed by crypto miners and the 2025 crypto equity fund. The rise in DEXs was primarily driven by UNI, which saw a weekly increase of 15.4%. This followed the completion of on-chain voting for a key governance proposal on Uniswap, with approximately 69 million UNI participating, of which 40 million reached the legal threshold and cast their votes in favor, providing a short-term positive catalyst.
In contrast, Level 1 (L1) blockchains and exchange platform tokens saw slight declines. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) sector performed the worst, primarily due to the weakening price of TAO. The market generally believes this is related to Bittensor's first halving in mid-December. While the halving halved the daily issuance, it did not translate into new demand in the short term. Instead, it triggered liquidation behavior, essentially "selling after the news was priced in," and coupled with the overall de-risking of AI tokens, the pressure was further amplified.
The harsh reality of new tokens: negative returns become the norm.
If sector rotation has already revealed the direction of capital flows, then the return data of new tokens provides the most brutal commentary on 2025. Research shows that 117 new tokens were launched in 2025, the vast majority of which have had negative returns since their listing. The median token price has fallen by about 71% from its FDV (Fully Diluted Valuation) at the time of listing, and only 17 tokens (about 15%) are still trading above their initial offering price.
The decline was not only widespread but also astonishing. Approximately 40% of tokens fell by more than 80%, and overall, 85% of tokens had a market capitalization lower than their initial offering price. The most concentrated losses occurred in the 50% to 90% drawdown range, indicating that most projects did not instantly go to zero but were gradually marginalized by the market due to continuous losses.
Extreme cases are equally alarming. A total of 15 tokens have plummeted by more than 90%, including some once-promising star projects such as Berachain (-93%), Animecoin (-94%), and Bio Protocol (-93%). In terms of overall scale, the total FDV of these new tokens has shrunk from $139 billion at listing to approximately $54 billion, meaning that about $87 billion, nearly 60%, of their "paper valuation" has been wiped out by the market, and this doesn't even include projects that have actually gone to zero.
Common characteristics of a few new coin winners
Despite the overall dismal performance, right-tail dispersion persists, but it is highly concentrated. The worst-performing projects are mostly concentrated in infrastructure and game narratives, with Syndicate and Animecoin both falling by more than 93%. In contrast, the few outstanding winners share several common characteristics: late launch time, low initial valuation, and high product maturity. For example, Aster (+745%), Yooldo Games (+538%), and Humanity (+323%) all went public in the second half of the year, successfully avoiding the structural trap of overvalued IPOs.
In summary, 2025 marks not the end of the non-crypto market, but the farewell to the new token boom. Funds have made it clear that they prefer to flow into mature and verifiable infrastructure rather than unconditionally betting on overvalued projects. For investors, the biggest lesson from this year may be that in an environment of less abundant liquidity, valuation, timing, and fundamentals are ultimately more important than a good story.
This article, RIP: Why did new cryptocurrencies in 2025 "wipe out" and head towards collective demise?, first appeared on ABMedia, a ABMedia .
