How should determine the validity of a project through its distribution of wealth?

A friend of mine was scammed into investing in a project like Bitconnect. It was easy to see for me from the beginning that if you give them your fiat in exchange for a shitcoin that is only useful in that project, for a price determined by the staff and not by the market, you're giving away value for "certificates of value" that are only worth what the owners want them to be worth. It's like changing gold for dirt and then getting mad that nobody wants your dirt.