RIP: Why will the 2025 New Dollars "collapse" and head towards collective death?

The tide has gone out, revealing who isn’t wearing pants. The true state of market structure has finally been unveiled at the end of the year. For most crypto investors, 2025 is likely to be remembered as the “Year of Death for New Coins,” a painful chapter in the past. Against the backdrop of tightening liquidity and rapidly cooling risk appetite, valuations of newly issued tokens have faced comprehensive compression, with the infrastructure and gaming sectors—once the most sought-after—suffering the deepest wounds.

Market funds are no longer flowing into distant growth stories and highly diluted valuations but are clearly returning to more mature crypto core infrastructure with cash flow potential and network effects. This not only marks the end of the speculation cycle but also reflects that the crypto market is entering a more realistic, fundamentals-driven phase. This article, based on on-chain data reports from OX Research, reviews the true flow of funds at year-end from two perspectives: index performance and actual returns of new tokens.

Crypto Assets Under Pressure, Hedging Sentiment Rises

Overall, Bitcoin (BTC) performance last week was nearly flat, significantly underperforming the Nasdaq, S&P 500, and gold. This divergence further widened around December 18: most crypto sectors declined simultaneously, but the US stock market remained stable, indicating that market risk aversion toward crypto assets increased, rather than a simple macroeconomic slowdown.

Among various sub-indices, decentralized exchanges (DEX) performed the best, followed by crypto miners and crypto equity funds for 2025. The rise of DEX was mainly driven by UNI, which surged 15.4% in a single week. Previously, Uniswap’s key governance proposal completed on-chain voting, with about 69 million UNI participating, of which 40 million reached the quorum and cast affirmative votes, serving as a short-term bullish catalyst.

In contrast, Layer 1 (L1) blockchains and exchange platform tokens declined slightly. The AI sector performed the worst, mainly due to TAO’s weak price. The market generally believes this is related to Bittensor’s first halving in mid-December. Although halving cut daily issuance in half, it did not translate into increased demand in the short term, instead triggering profit-taking upon news release, coupled with the overall de-risking of AI tokens, further amplifying pressure.

The Harsh Reality of New Tokens: Negative Returns Become the Norm

If sector rotation has already revealed the direction of capital, then the return data of new tokens almost marks the most brutal footnote for 2025. Research shows that 117 new tokens were launched in 2025, with the vast majority experiencing negative returns since listing. The median token price has fallen about 71% from its fully diluted valuation (FDV) at listing, with only 17 tokens (about 15%) still trading above their issuance valuation.

The declines are not only widespread but also staggering. About 40% of tokens have fallen more than 80%, and overall, 85% of tokens have market caps below their initial levels. The most concentrated loss range is between 50% and 90%, indicating that most projects are not instant zeroes but are gradually being marginalized by the market amid ongoing bleeding.

Extreme cases are equally shocking. A total of 15 tokens have declined over 90%, including once highly anticipated star projects such as Berachain (-93%), Animecoin (-94%), and Bio Protocol (-93%). Overall, the total FDV of these new tokens has shrunk from $139 billion at listing to about $54 billion, meaning approximately $87 billion, nearly 60% of the “paper valuation,” has been wiped out by the market, not yet accounting for projects that have actually gone to zero.

Common Traits of a Few Winning New Coins

Despite the overall bleak performance, the right tail still shows dispersion, but it is highly concentrated. The worst-performing projects are mostly in infrastructure and gaming narratives, with Syndicate and Animecoin both falling over 93%. Conversely, the few standout winners share several common traits: later launch timing, lower initial valuations, and higher product maturity. For example, Aster (+745%), Yooldo Games (+538%), and Humanity (+323%) all launched in the second half of the year, successfully avoiding the structural trap of high valuation issuance.

In summary, 2025 marks not the end of the crypto market but the farewell to the era of new token bonuses. Capital has clearly expressed its preference: it would rather flow into mature, verifiable infrastructure than blindly bet on overvalued projects. For investors, the biggest lesson from this year may be that in an environment where liquidity is no longer abundant, valuation, timing, and fundamentals ultimately matter more than a good story.