[SUI-3183372]

Had no idea this number had inflated so much. Seems like it was ~5 years ago when CoinMarketCap was tracking about 3,500 different cryptos. Now it's over 22 million. Crazy [irresponsible].

I know it's to be expected with the emergence of platforms like pump.fun. Hell, Solana has something like 30 million tokens launched alone at this point, but to see 1.6 million added to the tally on CoinMarketCap over just the last 30 days is bonkers. They used to be so much stricter and acted as the gatekeepers to discovery.

In comparison, CoinGecko is only tracking ~19k cryptos, this illustrates how much of the 22M is micro/illiquid spam (GeckoTerminal does track 17 million tokens so I guess take that 19k figure with a grain of salt).

I sit here thinking, surely this isn't sustainable and we'll see some sort of consolidation, some sort of switch will get flipped and new token launches slow down... but as I think more about it, it's probably the contrary. I bet that this is the new forever norm in crypto, a persistent flood of new tokens, because it’s cheap and culturally viral to launch them. But/// this will also lead to a different type of consolidation, a consolidation of value, not supply, and attention into a tiny upper tier of tokens (top 100/1000).

Idk the point of this topic, just wanted to share some numbers that I initially found shocking, and I guess to discuss what the landscape is going to look like through the remainder of the 2020's.

[Braco22]

As long as people still view crypto as a get rich overnight scheme, we'll get this number inflated much higher.

[StuffSneak]

What the actual heck. That is indeed way too much. I wonder what kind of strategy they are using to include them.

[Hackers]

What the actual heck. That is indeed way too much. I wonder what kind of strategy they are using to include them.

TLDR Version:

> some platforms make millions/billions on trades, regardless of bull or bear

> some platforms make millions referring new investors to those platforms, via affiliate programs

> both strategies are incentivized to list tokens, regardless of principles or investing strategy

---

A lot of the top platforms make money on fees whether the market goes up or down.
I imagine even websites that don't sell certain tokens or any have been "lobbied" by the exchanges to include as much as possible.
That's not always 100% true for every platform, but with risk mitigation and strategic launches, they make more than enough to cover failed launches / ICOs, etc.

It could also be a legal strategy... If you don't gatekeep the information, it's hard to accuse a site of pumping or dumping, or otherwise influencing the market. By including almost all, they can clean their hands of any possible responsibility for recommending a bad token, or neglecting a good one.

I imagine they held strong to their principles, but folded under the temptation of having millions of coins that can be day traded.

Think about it...

People rush in to buy a new coin with little to no fundamentals behind their purchase.
Most of these coins fail.
They sell.

Platforms make a killing on this scenario because the regretful buyer in that situation usually pours the money into another token... and another... and another...

Even if 1 site doesn't benefit directly from that, I am sure there have been countless requests to coinmarketcap (and others) to list tokens, or go as far as listing all sub tokens for a network/chain.

[onlineuser | D3RFER]

You're spot on.
Token inflation doesn't equal the value inflation at all. We will probably end up with millions of dead tokens but only a few hundred that is going to matter in the end.

Same as websites or apps today.

[Hackers]

You're spot on.
Token inflation doesn't equal the value inflation at all. We will probably end up with millions of dead tokens but only a few hundred that is going to matter in the end.

Same as websites or apps today.

Mm, good point!
The internet has grown, even as a high number of businesses have failed.

Most startups fail. Most tokens fail.
The markets go on.

[Omniscient]

Just seems like token spam to me. I stopped using CMC years ago because of their interface changes. Just took a peek, still don't like it.

I'd say part of the problem with listings is that data can be faked or manipulated like trade volume or even market cap.

If I owned one of these listing sites. I'd be like the early exchanges and require a fee to be listed unless it met certain unpublished criteria.

I don't know if anyone really cares of CMC lists 50 million tokens. It's their database and if that's how they want it managed that's their call. I wouldn't personally waste the resources.

[Yin Yang]

A lot of coins are getting spun up much faster. Dexscreener has even more not tracked by CMC