Some projects attracted significant usage before closing, raising questions about whether activity alone can support viable businesses.
Crypto is now experiencing a dot-com-style shakeout, with more than 100 projects reportedly shutting down, filing for bankruptcy, or disappearing in 2026, MoonPay President Keith Grossman warned on August 10.
According to him, the slump is forcing crypto companies to ask themselves a fundamental question: Are they developing products that people actually need?
Drawing Lessons From Past Busts
In a post on X that quoted a CoinDesk report, Grossman called himself “a geriatric” by crypto standards and noted he has seen a few cycles after joining WIRED in 2002, shortly after the dot-com crash, and taking his first leadership role there during the 2008 financial crisis.
“Companies fail, people lose jobs, careers change & confidence gets shaken,” Grossman wrote, stating that harsh environments may prompt individuals to rethink their reasons for building in the space in the first place.
Over 100 crypto initiatives have ceased operations or declared bankruptcy this year, with the shutdowns ranging from exchanges, wallets, DeFi projects, NFT marketplaces, and blockchain networks.
Grossman compared the situation with the dot-com collapse. He argued that the internet’s failure to support thousands of businesses did not mean the technology itself had failed. Instead, it showed that simply being an internet company was not enough to create a viable business, and he sees a similar test emerging for crypto.
“The question is no longer whether you can launch a token, create another chain, raise a large round or generate attention,” he wrote. “It is simpler: Are you creating something people actually need?”
The crypto veteran also connected digital assets with artificial intelligence, describing AI as “scalable intelligence” and crypto as “scalable truth,” based on a framework from John D’Agostino, contending that blockchains can reduce the cost of establishing ownership, authenticity and settlement.
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That argument led him to tokenization, although he cautioned that putting an asset on a blockchain does not automatically create value. According to him, the technology must make something meaningfully better for users.
Closures Put Business Models Under Pressure
Several shutdowns show that usage alone has not always translated into sustainable revenue. Tally, a governance platform used by more than 500 protocols, announced its closure despite having processed more than $1 billion in payments, with Everclear also shutting down after reaching $500 million in monthly transaction volume.
The same pressure has reached exchanges. As CryptoPotato reported last month, BitMart and BitMEX have started winding down their trading operations, with BitMart’s BMX token falling more than 60% following the announcement. Movement Labs also filed for Chapter 11 on July 23, pushing its MOVE token more than 99% below its previous all-time high.
For Grossman, these failures do not prove that crypto itself has failed; instead, they are testing whether individual projects have a product, customers, and a business model that can survive when easy capital disappears.
“Putting something on a blockchain does not make it valuable,” he wrote. “The technology has to earn its place. And so do we.”
