Buying and selling stocks (or crypto, or ...) on its own is zero-sum. If you sell your stock, someone else has to buy the stock for that same amount of money. You can only make money if someone else loses.

The loser does not realize they have lost money immediately, and while the stock price is up it looks like there are only winners. The losers only realize they have lost money after the asset collapses in price while they own the asset. That is the beauty of these schemes. The losers are already there, they just don't know it yet. Of course they are also heavily motivated to keep the price up to prevent themselves from becoming losers (hence HODL, "apes together strong", etc). These schemes can go on for a while, and a lot of people can make a lot of money in the process (again, at the expense of the losers, no money is being created here).

Stocks are only not zero sum once you account for e.g. dividends being paid out. That applies to companies with a solid foundation, but it is unlikely a company with no income stream that is rooted in fraud is going to be paying out sufficient dividends to their stock owners to account for the purchase price.