Edited out
Do you remember that those years contained a limited number of fraudulent projects? Did we live in different worlds? I remember very well that only here, on the forum, every day we found dozens of scam projects and most of them were based on fake technical documents. Sites were written on the knee, heaps of shitcoins were created, and accordingly, the number of scams grew exponentially.
I cannot say that today's time has changed anything. There are only a few alternative coins that are worthy of attention, and these are, oddly enough, not new projects; everything else, sooner or later, turns into dust.
I used limited to portray a viewpoint that could consolidate the level of scams, and fake projects in the now vs then, I don't mean to take you out on context that perceives it as if there were no scams in those days.
We have tons of scam projects way back in 2017-2018 down to 2020/and up till now, but if we compared the ratio of the level and extent that scam projects that have gained popularity between now and then, it clearly shows that we are faced with more scam in the current time compared to when we don't have new hypes like meme coins, NFTs and the rest.
Although, each period comes with its own unique hype projects/developments that end up putting holes in investors' pockets thereby killing investors' appetite and trust in the general crypto ecosystem.