Of the crypto top 100 by market cap in 2021, only 41 projects still sit on that list today. Another 46 are still active but have fallen out of the rankings, while 13 are considered dead. The tally, surfaced via Cryptorank, frames the 2021 cohort as the cleanest natural experiment in altcoin survivorship that the market has produced.
Why it matters
Every cycle produces a "what if you held the basket" backtest, but the 2021 list is the first one where most constituents have settled into a post-hype equilibrium. The 41 survivors carry the market structure most investors actually mean when they reference "the top 100". The 46 fallen-active projects are the harder cohort to read: each one still ships code, still lists somewhere, but no longer commands the float to stay in the index. The 13 outright deaths are the cleanest data points, names that pre-2024 retail thought of as sector leaders and that today are untradeable or near it.
Market impact
The read is not that 2021's top 100 performed badly. It is that the top 100 itself is a far more stable structure than its roster suggests. Investors who treat the index as a moving basket of strong projects will under-estimate the turnover; investors who cherry-pick single names from that era are mostly picking from a population where base rates are quietly poor. The Cryptorank dataset is now the standard reference point for every cycle-replay thesis going forward.
Source: [source](http://telegraph.controller.bot/files/8336652911/AgACAgIAAxkBAAJDY2pg4Z804_LKAAEJOwuKDYot9mejlwACaxprG1HzAUuWzILP30_3aAEAAwIAA3gAAz0E)
Frequently asked questions
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How many of 2021's crypto top 100 are still on the list?
41 of the original top 100 by market cap are still on the list today. Another 46 are still active but have fallen out of the rankings, and 13 are considered dead.
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Why is the 2021 cohort used as a survivorship benchmark?
It is the first top-100 cohort where most projects have settled into a post-hype equilibrium, making it the cleanest natural experiment in altcoin survivorship the market has produced.
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What makes the 46 fallen-active projects harder to read than the 13 dead ones?
The dead projects are a clean signal, while the fallen-active ones still ship code and list on venues but no longer command enough float to stay in the index, blurring the line between alive and abandoned.
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What is the base-rate takeaway for investors cherry-picking from 2021 names?
Base rates are quietly poor across that population. Single-name picks from the 2021 cohort draw from a pool where the majority have either exited the index or died outright.
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Where does the underlying dataset come from?
The survivorship numbers are drawn from Cryptorank's public dataset covering historical top-100 market-cap rankings.
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