This is not about investment advice, as such. But I have been itching to start investing in crypto-related projects (coin sites, NFT tech, games, etc.) and have come across a few interesting ones. The problem is, in today's world, handing over money to someone seems about as safe as throwing it from a moving car and hoping the right people catch it. I am totally okay with investments having some risk, I even like to put a bit into unlikely projects in case they take off. But I do not want to just hand some money over to a project and then realize they just ran away with it.
So my question is, how do _you_ invest in projects, regardless of the size, in ways where you feel you are not going to get outright robbed? If I want to put a few grand into Billy Bob's Crypto Cousins Emporium (not a real project...) but do not want to just hand over cash to someone in another country who then shuts down the operation and runs cackling to the bank with what was my but is now their money, what are my best options?