Fixygen: worst crypto startups and anti-cases of 2025 — where market punished hardest

01.01.2026    12:52

If 2024 was the year of “survival,” then 2025 became the year of “punishment for weak security and tokenomics.” According to Chainalysis estimates, more than $3.4 billion was stolen in 2025, with one incident — the Bybit compromise in February — accounting for about $1.5 billion. Industry security reviews also recorded losses of “more than $4 billion” for the year and an increase in the share of incidents due to operational failures.

1) Altcoins with failed TGEs: “token graveyard”

At the end of the year, estimates emerged that about 85% of tokens launched in 2025 are trading below their initial prices — meaning that most launches failed to maintain demand and liquidity.

2) Memecoin scandals: the $LIBRA case in Argentina

A high-profile counterexample is the story of $LIBRA: after a public mention by the president of Argentina, the token skyrocketed and then collapsed, leading to investigations and allegations of fraud.

3) Closure of NFT platforms as a signal that “the market has not returned”

NFT infrastructure continued to shrink. X2Y2 announced the closure of its marketplace in the spring of 2025. LG closed Art Lab, an NFT platform for TV, in the summer of 2025, directly citing a change in focus due to the market.

4) Social engineering and hacks instead of “pure” DeFi exploits: the Venus case

A notable episode of the year was attacks through the human factor. In the Venus Protocol case, attackers used Zoom compromise/social engineering to gain control over user actions and put approximately $13 million at risk.

5) Centralized services as “points of failure”

Even with the growing maturity of DeFi, the biggest losses are increasingly occurring in centralized services due to the compromise of keys and transaction signing processes — and this concentrates risk in single events.

Fixygen's main conclusion

In 2025, the “worst” were not those with less marketing, but those with:

1) weak operational security and access control,

2) toxic tokenomics and inflated issuance,

3) a product with no real utility (especially in NFT/GameFi),

4) a focus on short-term pumping instead of infrastructure and partnerships.

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