Your opinion is not 100% correct, ICO with working product does not mean it'll become success, some project raised a lot of fund without working product, how do you explain this situation? Whitepaper just a way to let investor know more about the project, 2018 not a good year for ICO, anyway I still believe lCO investments
This is not about the success, it is about at least investing in something you can see which as far as I am concerned, a whitepaper without a product is far worse than a project with both unless we want to lie to ourselves. Like you said, whitepaper is just a way to give you the idea of what the project is practically based on and make you understand the product.
However, in the absence of a product, you will only be investing in empty promises, and the last time I checked, I thought investors are already smart enough to know that investing in empty promises is like taking a huge risk.