Pixel Tap, another popular tap game, outright prevents you from progressing past level three unless you invite at least one friend - and by the time the airdrop rolled around, level three wasn’t enough to be eligible for any tokens. But for every friend you did invite, you got 5% of the in-game currency they earned, and 1% of anything players they invited made, essentially creating something indicative of a virtual pyramid scheme, or MLM (multi-level marketing), that eventually paid out crypto tokens to those at the top. The Pixel Tap crypto reached a high of $0.0977 shortly after it launched, but at time of writing is now worth $0.006405, less than a tenth of that peak.

Virtual pyramid schemes for monopoly money, lovely.