[throwaway315314]

When the project is initially made, the rules of supply are determined, in the case of many, a large portion of the supply is given to the creator for free, and they can use their notoriety to attract attention to the project, which they then offload to other people. From there, for the retail "investors", they are basically playing a game of hot potato, where people are balancing maximizing profits of price increases from supply being sold to increasingly greater fools, with the risk of holding it when it blows up and dumps and losing it all.