Market maker DWF Labs, drawing on data from Memento Research, has revealed a stark trend in the cryptocurrency market: more than 80% of tokens launched in 2025 are trading below their Token Generation Event (TGE) price. The analysis, which excluded memecoins and focused on projects with products or protocols, found that typical post-launch drawdowns range between 50% and 70% within roughly 90 days of listing on exchanges.
Andrei Grachev, Managing Partner at DWF Labs, emphasized to Cointelegraph that this reflects a recurring pattern, not short-term volatility. "TGE price is the exchange-listed price set before launch," Grachev explained. "This is the price the token is set to open at on the exchange, so we can see how much the price actually changes due to volatility in the first few days."
The report identifies airdrops and early investor unlocks as primary drivers of the selling pressure that crushes token prices shortly after launch. Data tracking 118 TGEs in 2025 found that 84.7% are currently below their launch price. The median decline in fully diluted valuation was 71%, with a 67% drop in market capitalization post-listing.
Exchange-specific data shows severe losses: Binance saw some high-profile venture-backed projects from 2024 decline nearly 90%, while Bybit and KuCoin recorded median returns of -70.4% and -66.1% for their 2024 listings. OKX showed slightly better resilience, with only 27.6% of its 2024 listings remaining profitable through Q3 2024.
Concurrently, a major capital rotation is underway. While new tokens flounder, fundraising for crypto-related Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) surged to about $14.6 billion in 2025, a sharp 48x increase year-over-year. Merger and acquisition activity in the sector also hit a five-year high, surpassing $42.5 billion.
Grachev characterized this as a rotation within the sector, not an exit. "If capital were simply leaving crypto, you wouldn't see IPO raises jump 48x year-over-year to $14.6 billion, M&A hit a 5-year high of over $42.5 billion, and crypto equity performance outpacing token performance," he stated.
The valuation gap is significant. Publicly traded crypto companies like Circle, Gemini, eToro, Bullish, and Figure trade at price-to-sales multiples between 7x and 40x. Comparable tokenized projects trade at much lower multiples, between 2x and 16x. DWF attributes this largely to accessibility for institutional investors like pension funds and endowments, which are often restricted to regulated securities markets.
Maksym Sakharov, co-founder and group CEO of WeFi, corroborated the trend, telling Cointelegraph that as risk appetite tightens, investors demand "cleaner ownership, clearer disclosure, and a path to enforceable rights" found in the "equity wrapper." He noted capital is flowing toward businesses in custody, payments, settlement, brokerage, compliance, and infrastructure.
Grachev concluded that the market is witnessing a structural bifurcation: "Tokens won't disappear, but we're seeing a permanent bifurcation: serious protocols with real revenue will thrive, while the long tail of speculative launches faces a much harder environment." This shift suggests investors are increasingly choosing between speculative token issuance and regulated equity exposure within the same crypto sector.
