Nearly 30 million tokens were manufactured in two years, and encryption is a huge "coin issuing factory"

Author: flowie, ChainCatcher

Edited by: TB, ChainCatcher

If you are still looking forward to altcoins, then you may lose some fantasies when you see this set of data.

According to the dune panel data statistics created by @cgrogan , the number of types of crypto tokens has increased from more than 3.4 million in 2022 to more than 39 million in 2025. In 2024 and 2023, the crypto market created more than 10.09 million and more than 18.7 million tokens each year.

In sharp contrast to this bull market, the explosive growth of altcoins is that the number of cryptocurrency developers has not increased but decreased. Electric Capital's Cryptocurrency Developer Report shows that the total number of crypto developers fell by 7% and 24% in 2024 and 2023 respectively.

The crypto market has long become a huge "coin issuance" factory without any concealment. Apart from the coin issuance model and the introduction of casinos, we can basically see new paradigm innovations.

Behind the fairness and getting rich overnight is the extremely low cost of doing evil and a large number of ordinary users who have been cheated. In long-term PvP, all important players, including users, are educated to become smart short-termists.

Leaving or waiting for a turnaround

Yesterday, the cryptocurrency Panic and Greed Index fell to 10, the lowest level since June 2022. @ZKSgu refuted Crypto's shouting for externalities, "No one in the field can keep it."

As the participants who have been criticized the most in this bull market, the exchange and VC are looking for opportunities to leave or are forced to leave.

The old crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX is seeking a sale, and according to people familiar with the matter, Deribit, the largest crypto options exchange, may have completed a merger agreement, with the acquisition amount likely to be as high as $5 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

Not only the exchange, but the entire crypto field is ushering in a wave of mergers and acquisitions. According to RootData data, in the two months since 2025, there have been nearly 30 mergers and acquisitions in the encryption field, with an average of nearly 15 crypto acquisitions in one month.

A large number of VCs are facing elimination. YettaS’ biggest feeling on Consensus HK is that VCs are full of grief: some VCs cannot raise the next round of funds, some VCs are halfway through, some VCs switch to strategic investors and no longer invest independently, and some VCs even consider issuing Meme to raise funds.

Investor @26x14eth began to call on young people not to focus on the most precious time on the currency circle to make gold, and to intern in the AI ​​and robotics industry with potential even if they have the opportunity. Because this is not the cycle that everyone can make money from 2017-2021, the most precious wealth at the moment is time.

But there are also people waiting for a turnaround. Encrypted KOL@cmdefi is not that pessimistic. His feeling is that the current market is like in 2018-2019. After the ICO bubble burst, everyone felt that there was no hope in this market and it was all a scam.

"But DeFi Summer is here in 2020, speculative funds are reduced, and the market is more focused on application innovation. Stay in the game. (Waiting for a turnaround)."

Assembly line coining crazy "blood-sucking"

This bull market is indeed hell-level difficulty.

There are almost no surprises of crypto construction. From Trump driving the "harvest" of celebrity coins, Picoin Institute and Safe recently attacked by hackers, everyone woke up as if they were dreaming. It turned out that the encryption system was so absurd and vulnerable.

The current situation of the encryption ecosystem drawn by overseas KOL@sherlock has resonated with the market. In addition to the crypto construction that is not solid at all, conspiracy groups can be seen everywhere.

This bull market makes money even harder to make.

Players who have experienced the baptism of the last bull market may be particularly painful. Binance and other wealth myths have been created in the last round, and have become dumping places for major Dogecoin investors, and the so-called alpha is the peak. P resto Research counts the tokens launched by Binance in the first month of 2025, with 100% falling by more than 70%.

If you are a beta diamond player with the top 20 market capitalization, you will no longer be rewarded. From July 2024 to date, the top 20 tokens in market value have generally fallen by more than 60%. The hair-fighting party also sighed that it is still impossible to escape being beaten by being beaten again and again.

The seemingly fairer on-chain PVP is even more messy.

As of February 26, the number of tokens issued by the Pump.fun platform has exceeded 8.1 million, the number of Meme coins with a market value of more than US$100 million is nearly 32, and only 154 have market value of more than US$10 million. Now, after experiencing celebrity coins scandals such as Libra, the on-chain PVP is also coming to an end.

Without actual encryption construction, most people cannot make money, so where did the money go?

Conflux Lianchuang Yuanjie may have revealed the truth. Except for a very few smart sons of luck, most of them have flowed to the various stakeholders of "assembly-issuing coins".

Yuanjie shared on Twitter that "The 'coin issuing factory' is not just VCs, serial entrepreneurs, market makers, OL Agency, studios, big players, and exchanges, a complete assembly line, greedily sucking this industry and the leeks like vampires."

In the crypto market, coin selling is the biggest business model.

In Yuanjie's view, under the "coin issuing factory" model, the project party's wealth creation process mainly focuses on two core links: chip distribution and upper-level societies. And the mode of issuing coins on this assembly line is:

1. Find the founder of the core circle (such as Vitalik, A16Z, Binance, etc.) or the leader with huge influence in meme to win low-priced chips
2. Make up beautiful narratives and use artificial data (TVL, on-chain data, node scale, etc.)
3. Interest binding Kol Group completes Twitter Shilling (Selling)
4. Hunting the core decision-makers of the Institute of Influence (How to) complete the final step
5. After entering the institute, start dumping through market makers and repeat the above steps to prepare the next project.

An investor in Web2 and Web3 also told ChainCatcher that because there is no R&D investment, the team does not have to support a few people, as long as the currency is completed, it will not be eliminated. "The market elimination mechanism has completely failed, and there are more junk projects and tokens."

But when ordinary users are no longer easily conspired by the "narrative" routine of project parties and VCs, the more rude meme coining model has appeared. The same methodology is just not playing with VC.

Behind the fair issuance of coins with almost no threshold is the extremely low cost of doing evil. Primitive Crypto investment partner @YettaSing believes that the Meme model is essentially a darker on-chain world than the VC model. Due to the lack of product and technical support, "absolute fairness" is often just a cover. The scandal of celebrity coins such as Libra has uncovered the last fig leaf of meme.

Where should the first shot of change be shot?

The wealth effect is ineffective everywhere, and the industry has begun to collectively reflect and hold people accountable.

Recently, public opinion has once again attacked the Maolu Studio. Cryptokol @mscryptojiayi believes that altcoins cannot be raised, and it can be traced back to the moment when the "bribery system" was prevalent. The first shot of industry change was to be shot in the hair-fighting studio.

In her opinion, the studio and the project party "conspired" to build a "false prosperity" in the industry, which not only diluted the expected benefits of ordinary users, weakened users' long-term loyalty to the project, and led to the degeneration of the community from a value community to an interest trading market, but also laid mines for the second-level market crash. ”

She criticized that there are even many studios that have no bottom line to collude with fraudulent projects, and are implementing shameless behaviors of jointly building rat warehouses and coaxing exchanges and users.

But the kol ice frog @Ice_Frog6666666 of the airdrop track refuted. He believes that "false prosperity" is the result of distorted development of the industry, but not the reason. The studio is not the biggest vested interest and rule-maker. If the knife does not cut to the biggest vested interest or is not aimed at the rule-maker, the reform is destined to be ineffective.

In addition to the Maowu Studio, this bull market is believed to have two other major interests in conspiracy with the project party, and VC and CEX are the targets of being besieged many times.

During the Hong Kong Consensus Conference, a Crypto VC even criticized that "90% of VCs should be closed."

The rise of VC coins is also due to the fact that there are too many encryption scams after ICO, and the projects after VC screening and endorsement have gradually been recognized by retail investors.

But this retail investor leader has lost trust. Retail investors believe that VCs can obtain chips at a lower cost and have information advantages, and conspire with the project party to dump tokens and harvest users.

In this bull market, VC coins are generally high in valuation and low in circulation, which caused the market to be smashed and was also the source of dissatisfaction among community users.

In response to the listing controversy last year, He Yi also bluntly stated that "some VCs are indeed the core reason for inflated prices."

The injured are always ordinary retail investors.

As the most powerful part of wealth creation, exchanges are naturally considered to be a big deal by the market.

Mainstream majors such as Binance and Coinbase have been frequently besieged by controversy over the past year. CEX's sky-high currency listing fee was once regarded by Moonrock Capital CEO Simon as the biggest reason for the project party's inability to bear and market liquidity loss.

Although He Yi later denied this sky-high "coin listing fee", CEX's coin listing mechanism and insider trading of "girlfriend group" have always been questioned as one of the culprits of blood-sucking harvested and sucking in garbage projects.

Although He Yi has repeatedly stated that Binance has a transparent and complex currency listing process, the meme TST on the BNB chain has been launched quickly and immediately smashed the market. Even Zhao Changpeng began to question Binance's currency listing problem.

Not only exchanges and VCs, but almost any earner in the "coin issuing factory" can be "revolutionized". Encryption kol @CyberPhilos believes that the three major borers in the Crypto world are in addition to CEX, there are also KOL Agency and market makers.

A common view is that important participants in this bull market are too path-dependent, do not have enough native innovation, and everything goes ineffective after no new external liquidity is entered. But is this the result or the cause? Why can every side of the chain become a "borer"?

Overseas kol Murtaza reflects, “Wealth comes far ahead of practicality, not just a small mistake that will be solved by itself over time. This actually poses a fatal threat to the technology realizing its potential.”

Murtaza mentioned that the global cryptocurrency industry has a market capitalization of more than US$2 trillion. Usually, an industry of this scale will only be formed after something useful to society has been developed.

Cypher Capital Bill and Nothing Research partner @0x_Todd have similar views in reflecting on the dilemma of VC and exchanges.

Bill said that Web3 venture capital and Web2 venture capital follow completely different logics. The former emphasizes that "early fame is the key", and the model of quickly creating wealth prompts founders to pursue trends, focus on marketing and quickly list on exchanges.

In Bill's view, Web3 actually requires more "patient capital" - venture capital that takes a Web2-style approach and supports the founders to build long-term value in major markets, so that the team can focus on product development rather than rush to cash out.

The difficulty of listing CEX may also be due to the premature cashing of wealth by the project party. @0x_Todd believes that compared with listed public offerings in the traditional Web2 market, the problem with the Crypto protocol is that it enjoys the benefits of traditional listing: investors exit/motivate employees, but do not assume any obligation to traditional listing.

The lack of crypto-regulation is also the key to the problem. @0x_Todd said that all the tricks such as "bribery, fraud, fraud, and fraud" should be used because they will not receive punishment.

At present, the panic in crypto has reached an extreme, and although everyone is held accountable and reflects on it, they are also collectively trapped. Whether the industry can really "scrape the bones to heal the wounds" is still unknown.