Number of Tokens on Coinmarketcap Exceeds 11 Million, Market Leader Saturated

The explosion in the number of new tokens every day is driving unprecedented growth, but also entails a multitude of consequences. With the number of tokens having increased a hundredfold compared to the previous cycle, does the market still have enough room for an altcoin season?

On the morning of February 9, the number of tokens and cryptocurrencies listed on CoinMarketCap exceeded the 11 million mark. This spike mainly comes from the wave of memenoin on Solana, especially during 2024 and early 2025.

The current amount of tokens on the Coinmarketcap platform. Source: CoinMarketCap

This has caused the user community to fear that memenoin is taking over attention from tech altcoins, undermining the speculative valuations this group once held.

With the explosion of new tokens, analysts and traders are beginning to question the negative impact of millions of tokens competing for cash flow and attention in an already oversaturated market. According to analyst Ali Martinez, too large a number of tokens may be the main barrier that makes altcoin season (the boom phase of altcoins) unlikely.

He estimates that there are now more than 36 million altcoins, while the number in 2018 was only about 3,000 tokens, and even less than 500 altcoins in 2013-2014. Martinez noted that this oversupply has changed the market landscape significantly.

The amount of tokens created in 2024 is up very sharply compared to previous years. Source: @cgrogan.

Pressure from the growing number of tokens has forced Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, to reconsider the listing process on the exchange. On January 25, he announced that there are now about 1 million new tokens being created each week, and that number is still growing rapidly.

Armstrong argued that manually evaluating each token was no longer feasible, and called on financial regulators to allow exchanges to adopt a faster listing process to adapt to the pace of market development.

Under the pressure of the token boom, many experts predict 2025 will be a period of consolidation of the crypto industry, as projects face the problem of too many tokens having no real value.

Dan Novaes, co-founder of the EARN'M platform, said there will be more consolidation and token merger projects, as development teams pool resources to drive growth instead of continuing to issue new tokens.

ASI is the largest token merger project currently with the participation of 3 different projects. Source: ASI Medium.

Accordingly, he suggested that the market could soon face a natural purification cycle, where substandard projects would be abandoned or forced to merge. This happened with the wave of mobile apps in 2008-2010, when the rampant development of pointless apps led to a purge, leaving only products with real value.

If crypto follows this trend, 2025 could become a turning point, where the market begins to shift from chaotic growth to a consolidation phase, focusing on quality instead of quantity. Projects that fail to prove their worth will soon be scrapped, and this may be the necessary step to bring the crypto industry to a more mature stage.