That was your mistake. Always do your own research before investing. Don't lower your guard in the crypto world, especially in new projects. That friend of yours might be trusted but the team in that project isn't. I always wanted to invest in new projects as well but there are a lot of run-and-gun teams out there. You need to outsmart them and dump before they can.
And the moment investing instead of being a way to put your money in projects with great fundamentals that you believe will do great in the future, becomes just a game of chicken in which everyone is trying to outsmart the other and see who ends up with a bunch of useless coins, then you know investing has being distorted to the point of becoming irrecognizable, so newbie investors need to keep in mind that if the project in which they are interested is not innovative in some way or form and has a good group of developers then they need to forget about investing in that project as there is almost no hope for them to make profits with that coin.