Topic: Do you fund ICOs ? (Read 679 times)

People are had enough of ICO's but there will always be an exception, like if the concept is really good and the dev is transparent in running the project, he is not afraid to face his investors and can do videos webinars, in short, he is transparent and hands-on.

Bitcoin dominance is huge and people are concentrating their portfolios on the top coins in the market, and this year new coins are having a hard time to market their coin because of the edge of top coins in the market.

If you think your friend had a good concept and he can be transparent then go for it, who knows some investors are looking for a new project to invest.

I can't deny that at this point of time most of the ico are difficult to determine if this was a legit or not.
Personally, I never ever did before investing in any form of ico, but I joined to some ICO which I think has a potential
to increase its price value in the market. But good ICO was hard to find that the truth which is need to make a research
first before joining in.

Unfortunately STOs are not popular and by definition can not be popular because in order to invest into a normal STO you have to be an accredited investor, which usually means that you have to pass verification and evaluation of your financial prowess, normally proven by the amount of your income. In USA it is 250 000 USD a year. In other countries it is slightly less, but it is light years aways from what the median income is ( 53 000 USD for a household in USA and even less in other countries)


As for IEO it is an illegal practice, and it is only a question of time when people start being prosecuted for IEOs. Mostly the exchanges themselves , not the people who participate. But still, you can forget about IEO



the fact that it is popular doesnt mean that it is legal or sustainable. Have you ever tried researching what the project has to do in order to have an IEO on a reputable exchange?

investing in ICO is uncertain mate because sometimes when  they're facing many problems they give up always. that's why moslty now a days there's a lot of abandoned project.   So much better to invest in bitcoin which is you can assure everything will be fine and you can gradually obatin profits  on it .  Unlike ICO you need to wait until the sales end before you can get your rewards in it. And with bitcoin even in different situations your money will not disappear suddenly.. So we neet to become smart when it comes investing our money.

Hmm a little strange, if he is not a team why would he sell his car? in the above thread you said that he needed money to develop his project.


The team does have a big influence, because they are captain. When team just couldn't handle how they were able to develop further, it ended up being just a scam. But what is more influential is concept, well the concept adopted by project is because investors are looking for a new concept that is far better than old concept.

why do they mostly not last long in the project? I think many factors influence it. we know a lot of engineering in a project, to get certain goals, so that in the end it also falls, besides that many projects whose products are not running, so there is no circulation in it. with no product realization, there is no interest from investors or traders to see prospects going forward, and eventually the project dies

Maintaining the market value of the token is really a difficult task. Therefore, I do not participate in the ICO. But sometimes it happens that the price of the token drops although the team has a work product and good marketing and is working hard on the project. In such cases, you can buy a token at the bottom. Sometimes tokens will grow in the future. But the bear market is really bothering them of course.

The only answer for that is the proper regulation, when ICO was very popular, there's lack of regulation and I think only those ICO who are under the US are regulated and in fact, those scams ICO were called by SEC and some even are punish like the founder of Centra who got into jail and also Mayweather and DJ Khaled were penelized monetarily for promoting the ICO which indeed a successful one.

Unfortunately, these ICO scammers are smart enough, so majority of the ICO are coming outside the US where there's a lack of regulation or not regulation at all, so if we like to see this regulated, that would be good for the market but it will not happen instantly, it will take time for sure.

To retain its market value for token is a very challenging artworks for developers and marketing in charge of a certain project. Could be that 90% lost for the selling price is really that bad and to look dead anymore. There is something we have to work for and funding for ICO is not the risk but a very very risky thing to do. If we want to lose money, then this is the way we should have to do..

I will not do it. According to the analysts, 11 ICOs showed a return of over 1000%, 30 ICOs exceeded Bitcoin in this indicator, and 94% of tokens lost more than 90% of the price to the first cryptocurrency.
The experts concluded that most of these projects are not capable of retaining value over a long period of time. Now, I have started suspecting that IEO will be not much better.

Frankly speaking, we wanted to launch ICO, then IEO, then ICO, then we started to invent abbreviations regarding tokensale etc.  But yeah, it's not the right time. Any more.

Practically speaking that's right, way back there's a lots of chances to earned from this place of investment but right now it's hard to pick the right project to support and invest your money,  the amount of risk is very high as there's a lots of possible scam projects that will only run your money away, it's a good deal when you pick the right one and funded project that will generate good outcome.

Generally, I'm on your side. It's bad for the market, imho. Any ideas, what could forse us to invest again in ICOs?

When the beginning of ico appeared, I was very interested in investing and it was true that in the beginning there were many benefits, but as it grew, the quality of ico itself declined due to the large number of projects that failed or ended in scams. at this time I would rather put money on altcoin than in ico or IEO funding because they are both equally high risk

Made investment twice on ICO and I do compare that profitability does really depend on the project team behind.I blindly make an investment to a project which I do choose based on my intuition and a project that I heavily make some research because I believe into its potential but in the end the one I hadn't taken seriously do give me some profits and the one that I'm been serious off put me on a huge loss.So you cant conclude which one will progress out.

I know an exchange selling Perlin "futures". Of course before the IEO at Binance. Yesterday it took me a day to find it out, but thanks to Telegram chats and threads here I did that. People say x3-x5 profit can be made easily.

They promote it for quite long time. I foresee difficulties for each and every guy willing to insert his few dozens bucks

I'd rather prefer IEOs. Now look forward to join Perlin (Binance ieo). People say IEO are going down but CZ still want to hyip. Hopefully I will have a chance participate

It is because the team sell their tokens higher, 1 USD for 1 token is worst. and also the coin has too much supply, projects has no daily consumption on their platform, Some coins are also mintable, I hate such coins those are mintable as these kind of coins are only good for lending platform which uses the POS algo.

I have join ICO once as investors, and it not end well  because price in market is not really good after listed and it keep getting worse only in time. For me, ICO is something that almost like gambling because actually we don't know what will happen to project that we invested and then profit or lose is always depends on the project itself. But when you pick good Project, or at least know when to sell the tokens, you can get profit because usually after listed on market, it will get pumped a little. Maybe take chance on that time is good thing. About Ethereum, it already steady and stand in market although ICO trend not come yet, so i think no matter ICO is happen or not, Ethereum, bitcoin and other coins will be good as long there are demands on market.

There is no reason to expose your funds to danger by investing them in a random unknown ICO.
Obviously, projects like BTT are top-end on the market and it doesn’t matter that the project conducts ICO at that time or IEO now, it would have collected a huge amount of money and would have been successful.

We can't buy altcoins price at its lowest but as it continues to go down, we know it's already dipping and that gives us an opportunity to buy at a very cheap price. Actually last year was the worst year for altcoins, this year there's a slight growth but it's still dependent with BTC as they fall also when BTC falls.
As an investor, we like to sell early as possible, but this market now does not allow us, so we have to choice but to continue to hold and wait for the right timing, if that doesn't come this year, there's next year where we will again expect, we continue to be optimistic but we don't loss our faith because when we invest, we HODL.

It may not be the best but there are a lot of stories that have made their lives successful in the usage of ICO.
Yes, now money is needed for ot start and ICO like company and also than means putting the coin in an exchange a gains.
Yeah, that and that just for registration only. They are not even in the market yet.

Different eras with the new solution by now of IEO's to prevent scams. I do think ICOs just didnt see that before. But now we are upgrading maybe it is time to gun again.

Why not?
this is part of a profitable investment, with a few notes. investments must be based on good project analysis and future benefits.
real projects provide big innovations in the blockchain industry, and of course we are involved in them.

Majority of us really use to think that it is best to hold these altcoins for a long term before we realized that most of these altcoins are actually best to be held for a short period of time, because most of the investors in those projects has committed big money and they will move it out as soon as they see any profit in it. So, altcoins will always rise and fall many times and may not continue to grow as we want it.

The best for altcoins is to buy when they are low, and then sell when they are high, the we buy back again when they are low for many possible turnover, that will only be valid with projects that are with real working product though, because we have some projects that once they dump, they will not rise gain till maybe God knows when.

For clarification. IEOs or STOs does not destroy the nature of smart contract platforms but added to it security because some project owners were actually abusing the system by creating a fake project in other to steal from investors and the community needs a change which is why the IEO and STO come to the picture.
 I think the reason why the OP friend make lost from his previous project was bad timing because he launches the project when the crypto market is in bad shape.

I think we cannot blame his friend because he supports the project by working on the project, help the project to run correctly but suddenly, the money is the problem on the project. His client cannot raise the fund, so that makes the project failed to get success. There is no one can be blamed for this because every project must have money to run and no matter how good the project, and if he cannot get the investor, the project will not run as what he wants.

It's happened with almost all projects, and we know that it is a big problem since 2 years ago. Coincidently, the market was getting down in the bottom, and that makes almost all project were collapse too. The investor now becomes smart, and they will not spend their money in a big amount if they cannot see how good the project. Many of them were suffering, and they cannot make a profit.

I think the investor will invest in the project if the project has transparent to explain everything to the investor so the investor can think and decide. I see that many projects cannot give the right explanation or transparent to the investor, so they don't trust with the project.

If you invested in the last quarter and decided to hold, then that's a guaranteed loss at that time the market is in bull run and therefore the price has reach its peak, sometimes because we trust the long term potential of the project, we failed to sell it with timing even at times that we can already make a profit on it. If you your coin now is trading in big exchanges and has a great volume, I suggest that you still keep monitoring your coin, it's just down now but who knows it will recover in the future.

That's totally sad that good project don't raise their fund and other hand scammers loot investor money. At this moment people trust on IEO than STO or ICO. Because people are fed up to give their money on scammers hand. Anyone can start a fake project with ICO/STO and loot money form investors. I don't say it's not possible to scam in IEO, it is but not regularly like ICO or STO. If you research last couple of years how many ICO scam project loot money from people then you can understand why IEO arrived in crypto world.

It very much dependent on quality of it. Like IF I find something really impressive, it will for sure go ahead but if not then I won’t. I only prefer looking at quality Upcoming ICOs. So if something from that comes up into my interest zone, I will for sure look towards it. However, I always set myself clear of not trying to go for it when there is no opportunity, as I know if one is going that route, it’s just something that’s not going to benefit at all.

Lots of successful ICOs in 2017, unfortunately you won't try again. I'm sure it's not your luck in investing.
Among the successful projects are DCN, PPT and many more. Unfortunately this year we have difficulty finding similar projects. IEO might become more popular nowadays.

But apart from bitcoin and icos, there are other coins in cmc and newly listed that have done well. I also was scammed in ico, but I have learnt my lesson not to run everywhere for ICO. Back then, you will have to pend an order for buy in those shit ICO website 

I was once a fan investing in ICO, but now I only stick to Bitcoin mostly

Investing in new projects is almost like Russian roulette, because no one can immediately predict the further development of events.  I'm not talking about scammers in the ico company market, but about the fact that each project has its own history and its future, including its own team, when one team can be more professional than another.  Therefore, you cannot be sure of the results of your investments.

Everyone comes with a good project according to him, but where is a problem ?

The problem is:
1 the exchanges: Exchanges charge in BTC(while they should keep their listing rate in USDT, because for early projects, they were charging in btc and that time btc was around $12, $67 to $200) for coin listing, [the minimum a good exchange charge is around 5 btc or $50K) to cover this, team have to sell large quantity of tokens just like 2 billion, 4 billion or above

Or some projects sell more tokens comparing to their business worth

I don't invest in projects having billion of coins (greater than 1 billion)
because it creates too much inflation

I invested in 1 ICO back in 2017, and it was failed one , that thought me a lesson.Fortunately i only lost 100 USD.

I think projects need to be so amazing that ICO of it would be getting funded. First of all if you are a great project and not going with IEO route that means you personally picked not to, otherwise it would mean exchanges didn't want to list you and that is way too bad to actually convince people that you are a good project, no project that gets rejected by any exchange for legit reasons could be considered a good one.

If we leave that aside and say it was personal choice than you would have to convince people that your project even during ICO stage is guaranteed a spot in an exchange as soon as its public, people want to trade it and most want to sell it to be honest, without that option people are sick of investing into promises because many already failed to deliver and why would they trust that you would be different.

I have given the solution if you can read previous reply.

You're friend is a good coder and as you stated, he said that people who are investing in ICO's and Bitcoin always get losses and yet he involved himself in a project and worse, he spent 3000 hours and in the end it failed. Its the fault of your friend because he sees ICO negatively and yet he created a project for them.

Anyway, supporting the ICO's thru investing is a good choice but most projects right now are either useless (it can't help the people) or scam so investors are thinking thrice right now before investing to it.

If you are not getting my point then here is a further explanation that how IEOs and STOs are destroying the nature of smart contract platforms and who can launch an IEO ?

For launching an IEO you are required to have at-least 1 million dollars or 100 btc
While launching an ICO required only team members and a few hundred dollars

IEOs are launching by already funded people (just like Justin Sun who first created TRON and after launching it, he launched first ever IEO on binance for Bittorent tokens)
While ICOs are launching by individuals or new people(new businesses) who want to enter in blockchain world, hence IEOs are blocking little businesses or new businesses to be entered in blockchain world becuase IEOs are required big investment and only those people can afford it who already have been funded (just ask it from yourself that can you take a million dollar risk for launching an IEO? as you required this money to give it to exchanges for token listing, reviews, ideas, ieo steps just like pre IEO, post IEO etc) no because you can only take a risk for no more than hundred dollars so in case if ICO succeed and enough funds are raised then you can put your business in blockchain by realizing that it has potential and your business can run on blockchain platform successfully as you don't need to be dependent on your local or old customers, you will find new customers.

Since when there is no need for IEOs to run a campaign then very little people could be aware regarding your project, so your token could be just a part of the exchange but while in real life it will destroy your business because many less people will be aware regarding your business and you will loose majority of people to come to your platform and the final result will be that you will just shutdown your business or the token will not grow much, instead it will be dead because you will not find customers and hence no money will be entered to the project (when no buyer will make a purchase of your tokens then there is no chance for new investment to be made, so your token will just become just a pump and dump coin after a few years because of  two foctors, 1= new investment is not coming to the project because there are no buyers and 2nd=lack of advertisement or a bounty campaign in the start of your IEO which could attract your buyers later)

Now lets talk about the purpose of smart contract platforms:
These platforms are created in a decentralized manner where there is no need for a third party while exchanges are third party, when there is no need for a third party which mean that IEOs are destroying the nature of smart contract platforms, do you think when there will be a third party involved then these project can attract people or can get potential buyers ? No, then who will buy Ethereum, Neo or other tokens ? & how value may come to those projects when there is no demand for that currency ? then how you can say that Bitcoin and Ethereum both works in a decentralized manner ? will the aspects of decentralization survive ? which will just kill Bitcoin and these cryptocurrencies, as you know that Ethereum has already dead, from 0.09 to 0.016. Just because of IEOs and no more demand. IF this continues then you can see the future too.

& the last question, how you think that IEOs are successful, don't you see BTT from 10 sat to 5 sat and the trend is still bearish. If IEO projects could be successful then you could see that BTT trend is bullish (10 to 20 or 30 sat etc)

Its really tough to come out with a good project and fall down like this .However fund raising always a tough way to go through if it's become success the project couldn't go for many reason like market situation .I think a good project always come up with a huge potentiality if it's not true we can't see eth,Tron as welll established coin .So that a good project always raise the fund.

You should learn first that who can launch an IEO ? and why Smart Contracts created ?

then I think you will understand that how IEOs are destroying the nature of smart contracts platforms, further more I don't want to explain it, already explained.

It means they are useless,honestly I didn't see any good projects with success after their fund raising time so it means most project come with the intention of money making and they leave their projects standstill after they reached profits.

I don't understand how you think IEO would destroy the smart contract when there are still a lot of ETH tokens now that are having their sales through IEO in different exchanges. Can you enlighten me about your explanation because what I understand is when there's a project that issues a token, they use a smart contract on that.

Please refer to previous replies. IEOs are not good because they are destroying the nature of smart contract platforms. If people need the IEO then was there any need for building such projects ?

If IEOs continue, Eth or other smart contract base crypto currencies will not get attention and even these trend could destroy the bitcoin too.

The world has bad and good from the beginning, worse and fine is in every field.
Not all people are same, it does not mean that you should loose your faith, basically you blame other when you put all of your money in a project and get lost, Rule No. 1 in Crypto is that invest whatever you afford to loose, which mean that you are destroying your funds without a hope regarding you will ever achieve them. So invest whatever you afford to loose. Do not put all of your money in the same ICO, instead divide it by multiplying your funds which you can afford to loose to many ICOs. If you get scammed in someone, then other will give you a great profit and you'll be able to recover your money with a good profit easily & maybe your profit margin could be higher than you usually think.

I think it could be the reason. But not sure because I don't know that how the marketing was done.

I usually don't invest in mediocre ICO projects. I knew that he had a great deal of effort in forming a big business but it seems his Dapp wasn't good enough.
He needs to review his Dapp and why he failed in the capital call. Failure is always the mother of success.

It is really getting difficult for people to now fund ICOs because record of money that has been raised through ico scam is too much and people are hearing these news and seeing this figures, and with this figure, how do you expect them to be discourage after also knowing that majority of ICO projects in the market including the one that as fully been developed and just full of scam.

No matter what your friend is developing, we have some people that have developed similar thing in similar ways but they still end up using the application to scam investors, so to get investor convinced now in dropping their money for any project takes a whole loots of works and convictions. So for me, I would never support that ICO projects with my personal money.

In this year, I don't invest my money on ICO's because I don't think that it will give me a profit at all. Besides that, I see that the ICO trends has ended and now, it replaces with IEO although IEO is not too popular depends on the ICO. And soon, IEO will be replaced by another new trend which will always come and replace the old trend. I give my support for people who can continue what they did, but my support will not be 100% because that depends on how he/she work in the project. We need to become realistic and don't spend all the money to him because the project still needs to survive in any situations.

Unfortunately for him. But economics are unethical. This is a very good and practical statement.
If your product is really good, it will be a successful fundraiser. Nobody wants to invest in a bad product, because investors see the future ahead.
Please try again, I think he will succeed.

There's no problem with the project, it's just that the ICO was raise at the wrong timing.
Try to make a research and you will know the public sentiment, they don't want ICO anymore because they can invest in IEO which is more profitable.
Also, investors prefer to get their ROI faster so they'll choose to invest in IEO like Binance to gain profit when the hype is on, right when the coin started trading.

The first one is because it is not that interesting? Maybe?

Not all of the projects are that great and may not gather that great number of investors in the process. Another thing is that the way they market their project since as far as I know, that is the hardest thing to do while starting your own project.

From the perspective of ICO sponsors, I am the earliest investor in ICO. I spent a lot of time on money, management, research and development, marketing and projects. I raise funds in advance and sell them in advance. I use cash to create more markets. Compared with the development of the project itself, it will be more secure, so ICO is a more pure way of running the project.
IEO are more like financial games controlled by exchanges or capital.

I think the failure experienced by your friend is because of poor marketing,
not questioning why we come or not,
it's our right to join or not,
but the big question is how marketing is done on projects that your friends are following,
and I'm sure the marketing is still less than the standard words that other projects often do,
they also have a concept and know which projects are your friend's project rivals,
and also what the difference is so people are drawn there.
these are just a few important points that can serve as examples for evaluation.

I don't think so that you should pause as if you find a ready product then there are less chances to be scammed, a scam is whatever if you think that the owner or developer can run after taking the funds from you without listing those coins to an exchange. Because when a coin get listed on exchange, the early bids are higher than the ICO price. so you can sell those coins with some profits or maybe with 10-100% of profits. even if the project has less chances to grow, then when a token get listed on exchanges then it works similar to lending platforms where you sell the coins with great profit. but profit in icos could be less compared to lending platforms. It is because when you will not support ICO projects then you may loose some good projects or those projects could be dead without launching.

But instead you should avoid IEOs because they are destroying the nature of dapp,dao platforms, if this continues then I don't find any progress for xem, neo, eth, nuls, trx, xtz, ark etc. people will just avoid them and they will become just penny coins.

Yes, during 2017 I bought some ICO on the market. Since ICOs before are really dominant and good enough to be an investment. I had bought before the ICO which were really hyped and had a product. But it turns to nothing when I joined different ICO that were scammer and failed. So, as of now I decided to pause a little while in funding or buying coins in an ICO.

Your friend must have been devastated with what had happened. He sold his car and spend hundreds of hours for the said project and at the end it failed. He could have offered his skills to other developers who could at least pay him in part in ethereum or in bitcoin. Its sad that ICOs nowadays are very unreliable. No wonder why a lot of ICOs are failing because they are losing investors. People don’t want to trust them anymore.

So do you mean that only whales can launch their IEOs ? and the people who really want to bring something should get out, out of this ICO craze ? This mean that already funded people has the chance to launch an IEO, launching an IEO on binance launchpad, or Bittrex need to have atleast 100+ BTC. so if you have such amount of money, then you don't need to go for an IEO to raise funds, you can spend these funds to your project and launch it. Let me know ICOs was for those, those wanted to raise funds for their projects with maximum less than a btc investment. If you already have money, then you don't need to go for IEO. and same for security tokens, the people who launch an STO, already have money (assets) which they claim that these are backing the tokens, means that these projects are left only for whales ?

Not anymore and from the looks of it thats the sentiment for the general public too. Some people still fund IEO's but the notion that ICO's could make you a lot of money is gone already. People fund ICO's less than 10% they used to (compared to peak) and that means not just me but generally nobody really funds ICO's anymore because they know it can't make you rich anymore.

It was a way to get rich quick because the early ones were great and they really made a product with their coin but nowadays only some horrible coins or failing teams try to make a new coin and get rejected by the IEO's so they focus on ICO's hence nobody looks at them. Its still millions of dollars funded but it is not really what you used to be and gone down incredibly low, seems like it will go even lower.

New business models has arrived, ICO are no longer the current trend that's why it is suffering and no longer being supported by a lot of investors around. IEO is the new thing, just look at how those projects quickly sold out in just a matter of seconds or minutes? To the OP, maybe investors are no longer interested to fund such project because of the simply reason that they don't see any potential profit with them. They would rather go to Bitcoin today or test their hands on the latest model that is IEO.

? does this make any sense ? you are saying that someone who worked for someone's project has sold his car to fund the project ? how did you assume that ? I did not say any thing like that.

He is just a coder (freelancer) and nothing more, the girl was just her client, he was not the team member of that project. He sold his car as he is facing financial problems.

What? Your friend is the coder at the same time he sold of his car to support the funding of such project.Spending 3000 hours for work isnt that easy.

He's working for someone then he should be the one on getting paid for the work done unless if the agreement connects with equity or shares when the project succeed.

About on the question on why people dont support ready project?I dont know why  They do love to support to those ideas which are still in limbo.

Well, IEO's and STO's are more popular right now. The problem I have with most ICO's is that they don't actually need a token or a coin to work, exchanges, platforms, gambling websites, what's the point of coming up with a new coin when you can already use any of the hundreds of coins that already exist and literally work in the same way.

Even if there is some project which can be found as very unique they still have to gain trust from the community to be a recognized coin like bitcoin then only they can make their dominance in the crypto market,or else they will vanish after months due to lack of community support.

All copycats would really have that kind of fate which is to become a dead project soon.There might be some projects might able to pull it up but not all the time.
Like erc20 projects that succeed but majority of them are already on the graveyard.So the question if I do fund ICO's? I have never done such thing.
I wont support projects which doesn't have an exceptional features that might convince me.

This is why those immediate projects were end up immediately.There are many projects fallen due to market conditions and other things I mentioned.Some replica projects got funds raised huge but did they got the success after that? Possibly no.

Yes, actually thats what I said, when you support other people, they support you. and no one loose, because they also make money, & you also make money. just like a win win game. but one thing I should tell the community that I hate this (hodeling after the ICO) when you buy something from the ICO then you should sell instantly whenever that token lists on exchange, you should only hold the btc, not the tokens., it is just like that you should only hold the gold, instead of fiat.

It not good to feel that when you are expecting for the better buy it will end up with nothing. I think he expecting to get payment from it. Well, you have a good idea mate, it is best to support people when the project is ready but anyway, there are many project which is very promising even they are just starting, we only need to think about it first.

I don't think so that uniqueness can make any sound to any project, just look at tokenmint, they just replicated an old project and it is raising funds, actually the thing which is matter is only the community who give the project any importance. & there were many unique projects which has gone. Now they do not have any worth, so uniqueness does not matter in this case, only the potential and promises can drive the project. but nowadays when there is a trend of quick money, then investors don't care regarding that what kind of project is that, because they just sell all the tokens at first launch or listing on exchanges and when they see that the coin has dumped too much, they re-enter to make more money out of that project.

Bitcoin is not something that comparable with ICO.


The reason why projects failed has various aspects like lack of advertisement,lack of uniqueness on their project so spending too much time on the project cannot be a reason to invest on it,they need to create something that people want to invest on.

Not all ico are fail to run their project. As an investors too it will be depend on the ico if you are interested to invest in it, because being an investors it is our obligation to make some research first before you participate as one of their investors. If you find out that project has something promising in the future and potential to increase too in the end, it means you can get a good profit in the end.

ٰIf there will be no ICOs, then there will be no value of Ethereum or another platform where you can build blockchain dapps, then who would like to buy Ethers or another Cryptocurrency? furthermore, If you fund someone, that does not matter where those are gone, because after the ICOs, when any token lists first time on an exchange then the investors make big money, atleast they receive whatever they invested in the ICOs. discouraging ICO will result that there will be no value of such tokens where you can make dapps or build other kind of projects, when there will be no projects, there will be no progress, and people will avoid the blockchain technology, even the bitcoin cannot become mainstream this way.

Additionally your concern regarding those people who spent their precious money on ICOs is not good, cannot be appreciated, because each project has a team behind it. & if you don't know that the early investors of ethereum has made big bags of money, as they have many ethers, (in the Ethereum ICO, one ether was sold at the price of 40-20 cents. Investors who invested around 1 bitcoin received 2000 ether) so those people already had big amounts, at that time when ethereum ICO was began, the price of 1 BTC was around 375-400 USD, and later the investors who just invested 1 btc, made 20 btc (sold 1 ether at the rate of 0.01+ btc) after when it was listed on exchanges) so consider when bitcoin took a jump to $800, suddenly ether got a big dump (traded around 10 cent in around Sep 2014) so the investors who already had big bags, they were launching ICOs and ICOs to filling their wallets, if you think that that people should not create new projects, and they should not fund the ICOs, then you mean to say that only the early investors who already had big bags of ethereum, has the right to launch the ICOs and the newbies, who are purchasing ethereum at todays price, have no right to launch their projects on the blockchain, because if they will spend something, they will be just in lose ? that is not a good idea, early investors who has now big bags should support the new projects instead of discouraging new people.

Crypto has the fortune for everyone, Everyone has the right to raise funds for their projects, businesses, or for anything, It does not mean that if you were the early investor and you had make a fortune, then new people who are entering in the cryptocurrency world, has no right to make a fortune, Just think that the restaurant who early accepted bitcoin by just selling bitcoin pizza at the price of 10K BTC, how much money the owner of that restaurant made ? ) and if you bought bitcoin at the price of $2, and now it is at $10K then you are now a millionaire for sure, but you think that newbies should not be given a chance to make money out of crypto, just you should make it then you will be called only a selfish piece of cryptocraze.

To answer the question in your subject, it's a big NO for me, funding ICOs is like simply putting your money into someone else's pockets, enriching him or her while you impoverish yourself.

Your friend seems to have learnt the hard way and he wouldn't be the first nor the last to fall for ICO scams.If he had invested in the bitcoin, he'll have still been in possession of his coin no matter what, whether its a rise or a fall, that's what people need to understand.
Investing in an ICO this days is like giving away the private keys to your wallet, it's no coin/fund of yours anymore when you do so.

One of my friend, who is a good coder too, just sold his car, when I asked regarding that why he sold the car ? I was thinking maybe he want to invest money in bitcoin, but he said that he is not interested in such things, he need money this time, people who invest money in bitcoins or ICOs always get losses, because building a simple project takes many time and a complex project needs research and a lot of money. He said that he is a good coder and thats why he developed a dapp for someone, he spent around 3000 hours, but after completing her project, her client replied after the ICO that she could not raise funds, and the ICO failed. The money she spent on the project has lost. So why you don't support people when you see a ready project or dapp ?

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