A new project is just launched. Say, a crypto gaming project. The owner of the game also gave himself some proportion of game assets at the start, at no cost to him, of course.
Just a bunch of codes initially.
When strung together, these codes become an appealing game service that brings in people... who also paid fiat to buy virtual game assets within it in order to play the game.
This goes on for a while. More people came in with their fiat. And interacting, enjoying the interesting economy in it.
Then a simple trick like burning some game assets by the owner drives up the value of the remaining game assets. Simple supply and demand logic.
Everything suddenly becomes more valuable.
Rinse and repeat, and values are created literally out of ideas and codes.