What they did is the exact same thing as issuing an IPO, just with a loophole to avoid legal issues of IPOs. Due to this fact, you either have to place all IPO people in the category of scammers, or none of them. It's kind of a binary option here. An IPO is basically a pyramid scheme by definition, though lol.
That is true. The situation in the cryptosphere now is comparable to the situation of the internet boom at the end of the 1990's. I was only a 12 year old kid back then but you would see in the news that many young people have become millionaires because their company did an IPO. Years later we all find out that most of those companies have no earnings and cash flow. They were all based only on ideas and hope just like the cryptosphere.