The money could be used from the other coins that the new project is doing. There isn't any money actually being lost if that's what you're asking.
Hm, what do you mean by other coins the new project is doing? The projects I recently noticed are selling the same tokens for the project's presale and crowdsale phases.
Nah, not so much money being lost. I'm wondering why wouldn't a project hold a pre-sale, make their move whether its development, marketing, partnerships, etc., then do the crowdsale. How come there's a pre-sale when a crowdsale will be hosted some days later?
Another idea I'm thinking is to showcase a successful pre-sale before the big ask with the crowdsale (like social proof), whilst maintaining the hype.
It's a similarily retarded and blatant scam scheme as any other ICO.
Your restaurant analogy holds true but what's the point of a centralized and controlled coin when you can use banks?
Every ICO ignores and goes against what crypto was created and stands for, plus it introduces uncertainty and invites crypto-newbie people to essentially gamble with their money while riding on Bitcoin's success with tools mostly used by casinos, like making users feel individual/important with VIP statuses/bonuses/reward schemes and time limited rewards so people make hasty and therefore likely dumb decisions.
Thing is, cloning a coin or starting an Eth token costs nothing and everyone can do it (which is why we have so many shit ICOs) and so the owners get whatever amount of coins they want without working for them, absolutely freely.
And what it boils down to is that those devs might as well have handfuls of sand instead of random coins and it's up to them to convince others that their coins/sand is worth something - which it isn't, until stupid people put money into it and make it worth something and greedy people buy them for even more money.
If it's not decentralized and fairly distributed, it's a useless step back or a blatant scam.
Yea for sure. I don't know about people ignoring what crypto is created/stands for. Is it really what they're thinking about? Aside from genuinely trying to do good in the world, you can certainly make a compelling case of money grab - after all, they're allegedly raising money for their vision/services/products/etc.
No doubt lots of faulty and ill-thought-out projects. I suppose people falling for scams is just a natural thing in the world. You got wolves among sheeps sort of thing + something something jumping-off-a-cliff-with-everyone-else herd mentality.
