Thanks for sharing your experiences with crypto. I, too, started a while back. In 2013, I came across my first Bitcoin faucet. I started on my path of collecting Bitcoin satoshi, then more and more Altcoins. I encountered many scams on the way. I learned NOT to invest my hard-earned money, but just use free faucets and free mining sites, which I stll use today. OK it's slow progress, but it's safe to the point that they remain online. When they disappear, well I've only lost a few seconds per day claiming from them, so no real heartache. That's my take, but thank you for yours.