I have a theory that shitcoins became wildly successful right around the time all those tools for no-code websites became good. Back in the day, a professional looking site was a decent indicator of legitimacy, because it required effort to set up and run. All of a sudden you had the price of bitcoin go up wildly and all these other projects with cool names, technobabble whitepapers, and catchy websites claiming to be just like bitcoin except better at x,y or z.