Several Altcoins do not perform anything, and some are scams. But normal people are getting rich off them. 

It was a Saturday morning and Adam was feeling daring. 

He had made thousands of dollars on a single trade the night previously and was feeling lucky. But Adam was not trading on the NASDAQ, driving GameStop stocks or investing in a startup. He was nearby to drop $2,500 into a cryptocurrency named DeTrade. 

It appeared safe. Adam had examined the coin's growth team on LinkedIn and observed a video of its CEO laying out a roadmap for the coin's future. A newswire piece available on Yahoo touted DeTrade's technology as advanced enough to disrupt cryptocurrency. 

Thanks to Bitcoin beating an all-time high estimate of $40,000, almost increasing its worth in two months, cryptocurrency is very much back in the zeitgeist. But though for several people Bitcoin is synonymous with cryptocurrency, it's not what crypto traders like Adam are involved in. Beneath Bitcoin and Ethereum, the second-best-known currency is a peculiar gangland of different cryptocurrencies. 

Named altcoins or, occasionally, "shitcoins," these are penny-stock cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin increased its value freshly, but many altcoins blast 30, 40 or 50 times over within days. Debatably the most well-known is Dogecoin, which freshly shot up thanks to a strong combination of Reddit and Elon Musk, but there are thousands of altcoins, founding an Indiana Jones-esque Cave of Crypto Wonders. 

Case in fact: Adam's venture into DeTrade. The pushed technology behind it wasn't actual. DeTrade, for all aims and drives, didn't exist. The LinkedIn profiles were counterfeit, and the video of its CEO was a deep fake shaped with AI. It was a scam. Those behind it, functioning in the unregulated world of crypto, disappeared. Adam lost his $2,500, but he got off relaxed. On the whole, those behind the scam acquired around $2 million.