well, for sure, the whole "when people start recommending the coin to their friends and relatives and repeat the promises" is like the backbone of all these crypto scams

i told my friend when he got super into Shiba, that i thought i knew a pretty good formula for making money off of a new crypto coin if he wanted to make one - (i was just using this as a way to try to show him why i didn't think it made sense for him to be so into shiba at that point in time)

• create the coin, whatever, this part seems complicated to people but i don't think it's nearly as difficult as it may seem to a layperson
• find like 10-20 low-mid-level "influencers" on social media, like people around 1k-2k followers, maybe a couple of people with a bit more than that. well, find more than that initially.
• create a free token drop thing and preferably have those people somehow entered into it. if you're worried that none of them would enter on their own, create a kind of nomination deal and have a few accounts following the people for a few weeks before you do this, and have those accounts nominate those people along with some other randos
• have those people be the lucky winners along with some pure randos (randos that don't have a massive following ofc - we would avoid huge followings because those people might either 1) discover it's a scam and turn their followers against us 2) hold us up for more money under threat of turning their followers against us)
• give these people enough skin in the game %-wise where they immediately feel invested in the success of the coin/token
• offer more coins to whoever sets up the best discord server for the coin, but set one up yourself and choose yourself as the winner - UNLESS one of those people seriously kills it and it looks like they might influence things positively enough to make it worth it

... i could keep going with the steps but i don't think i need to. though there are other silly things i think people do, like

• create nfts on any of the places that have low-to-no gas fees basically, price them ridiculously, "donate" them to the project and use this kind of thing to bolster the overall value of the project and/or also give these away to people in giveaways

i mean, surely there is some dumb luck that must happen along the way too, but this kind of thing is easily repeatable. just getting people thinking they're invested (when really what they "own" is like max $5 but so many tokens that they see huge profits with just tiny swings in their favor) is what matters most.

it's just crazy!