More than 100 projects have shut down in crypto in 2026 alone, and this is what's coming in the future. For some of these projects, I told you so. Most of these projects are based on flywheel marketing, people not understanding, speculation, hype, and no real deliverable. There's a list of these closures on rootdata.com, and I've got to say, I told you so on Loopring. I criticized it heavily in one of my Going to Zero videos before, and it's done now. It literally shut down. Everybody lost money on that. Same thing with Goldfinch. I remember there were so many of you, at least a few years ago, who were so bullish on Goldfinch. "Please review Goldfinch." Everybody was hyping Goldfinch up. It's shut down now.
This is the future of crypto. Almost every single project that is not set up to last the test of time is not going to be able to withstand the bear markets. And in case you didn't notice, most of crypto is bear markets. Most of crypto is not sustainable. It's things that depend on ignorant people throwing their money into stuff they don't understand and then getting ripped off. And people are not going to continue doing that forever.
What Counts as a Dead Crypto Project
So let's look at more of the stories and what we can learn, drawing from a post on BitcoinFoundation.org. RootData tracks all these project closures, and here's how they define a dead crypto project: by whether there are observable signals that the project is still operating. Usually projects are only listed after a closure announcement, a bankruptcy filing, or inaction over an extended period of time. There are a lot of ways things can be dead before that, which means there's a bunch of projects that are going to be listed as dead that aren't even on there yet. They have 99 listed, and I'm sure there's a whole bunch more.
If you look at why these projects are shutting down, some of these are pretty significant. BitMEX is a crypto exchange shutting down, and you can see there are some big names on the list — BitMart, BitMEX, AscendEX, and Zepr, as well as wallet providers. These are not sustainable without real revenue, because they have real expenses. If you can't generate an actual business with them, there's no way for these things to be sustainable without pump-and-dump inflationary tokenomics.
Now, most of these did not actually file for bankruptcy, because a lot of them claim to be decentralized. Some have just been so inactive, and others have made announcements — like BitMEX saying the exchange is shutting down its operations. AscendEX announced its termination on July 1st. Loopring, as I warned you before, officially terminated. Goldfinch announced that it was shutting down. Again, I warned you on both of these projects, and I believe nearly every single project in crypto is going to have the same fate, because they're not sustainable.
No Real Product, No Real Business
Look at all these different categories: centralized exchanges, layer two protocols, DeFi, DeFi analytics, wallets. They're dying because they don't have a real product. They just raise money, launch a token, and hope they can survive. Very few people are doing enough research before buying the tokens to tell the difference between those and a real project like Internet Computer Protocol — which is all I hold, because in my view it's the realest project in crypto. Not financial advice, just my opinion.
A lot of these are shutting down because venture capital is no longer looking to throw money into any kind of coin. But the main reason is that almost everything is using some token-based business model where, outside of token issuance and token price speculation, there's nothing there. When you're in a bear market with declining user growth and revenue — and that's most of crypto — then the only thing that's going to survive is technology so useful that people outside of crypto will use it, which in my experience only Internet Computer Protocol actually has.
If you want to see a little evidence of that, my website is hosted on Internet Computer Protocol. That is a valuable thing that's happening — it's the best web hosting solution I've found anywhere. And if you'd like to share projects you want feedback on or leave any comments, I only read comments now in my Skool community, so I invite you to join the family.
And it's not like one specific sector is failing. It's all across the board: layer two networks, NFT platforms, AI and developer infrastructure. There's almost nothing you can invest in within crypto that's safe from having a price collapse, from shutting down, from nothing happening. Right now we're seeing a big consolidation in crypto, which needs to happen, because in my view most of crypto is junk. You've got to have real revenue if you're going to be sustainable.
Red Flags and How to Research Projects
So what you need to know is to look for red flags. This is what I've called out in so many of my crypto reviews. If you can't find red flags yourself, post in the community and ask what the obvious red flags are — it usually takes me one to five minutes to find obvious red flags with projects. And how do you find sustainable crypto projects? They ultimately need to be solving real-world problems that people outside of crypto will use. You can also see why exchanges closing is very dangerous. What happens if your exchange goes bankrupt and you can't get any of your money?
The Bitcoin Foundation post shows a somewhat superficial approach to researching projects, like monitoring development activity. Well, development activity can be faked — the question is whether they're building anything that's useful. Track active users and revenue? Very easy to fake also, and from what I see, most of the top projects fake development activity, fake active users, and do anything to manipulate treasury and funding numbers. Here's one that matters, though: most do not provide much team transparency. One of the biggest trust signals is team transparency, which is why I believe DFINITY is leading the way — they have the most transparent, largest research and development team in crypto. Obviously service disruptions are a bad sign, but you really need sustainable business models. ICP has the only sustainable business model I see in crypto, where you can actually do something valuable, like pay to host your website directly on the blockchain. Charging to host a website is a sustainable business model with a real value proposition.
The Worst Is Yet to Come
I think the worst is yet to come. These are just some of the top projects — so many of the smaller ones you're not even going to hear of. I think we're going to see thousands and thousands more crypto projects shut down. Even some of the big names like Goldfinch and Loopring were pretty well known, and yet these projects shut down. I think I did reviews on one or two of the other ones on this list in my Crypto Reviews playlist, but many of these were too small for me to even cover. I think a lot of the small projects are going to get absolutely destroyed. Even some of the big names right now are going to have a price collapse and shut down after that, or hit some critical failure or some hack. The future of crypto looks very dark to me. You have no idea how unsustainable most of these projects are until you research them and try to find their business models.
In my view, even big ones like Bitcoin and Ethereum are not sustainable. They only survive through constant marketing and people not understanding that they're buying some tiny part of a spreadsheet, basically, that doesn't have much fundamental use going forward. I know there's stuff built on them, but there are huge potential problems, and the stuff that's built on top is capturing most of the value instead of the thing itself. So I've come to believe almost all of crypto is entirely unsustainable into the future and extremely dangerous. ICP is the only exception I see to that — however, it still has risk, and so far investors have done nothing but lose money, including me on ICP.
It seems obvious to almost everyone outside of crypto what I'm saying right now, but those of us in crypto have somehow forgotten it and think that speculation and hyping stuff that has no future makes sense. It doesn't. So I invite you, with every single token, to really think about: would I be okay holding on to this if it shut down, and what is the probability of this shutting down and going to zero? I assure you that for the vast majority of coins out there, the probability of shutting down is far from zero. If you appreciate this, join the family — post in the community, introduce yourself, talk to us, and share any coins you're interested in or anything you think me and the community should know about.