Okay, ICO's look more like the dot-com era ventures
On the other hand (just playing devil's advocate here), many dotcoms back then might have actually tried to make it but failed in the end, while what we see today seems to be more like deliberate scam attempts. Indeed, there should have been dotcoms that had never meant anything real right from the start, but the percentage should be significantly lower back in the day than it is nowadays. In a sense, people were more idealistic in late 1990's early 2000's, both investors and entrepreneurs alike. Investors weren't as greedy and cynical as they are today while entrepreneurs weren't as fishy and scammy
I wouldn't be so sure about the late 1990's being more idealistic and less greedy, but you pointed out an important factor: Deliberate scam attempts.
During the dot-com bubble the problem has huge overvaluations of companies with little to show for. With ICOs you have more of the same, with the added risk of scams attempts. Usually the latter would get filtered out early by regulations and a market of more experienced investors, but with ICOs you have neither in place. But maybe that's just my cynicism talking.
There is a big difference between the dot-com bubble and altcoins. Back then most financial magazines,papers and investment companies were pushing the investment potential of these stocks and funds. The result was millions of funds pouring in but the companies themselves did not make any profits. Now the knowledge base is between those who are aware of the products and understand the reasons behind the project. Gullible investors are not being targeted by commission hungry salesmen in financial adverts.
Gullible investors may not be targeted by hungry salesmen anymore, but they are still targeted with meaningless whitepapers, buzzwords and cookie-cutter fancy websites. I also doubt that the knowledge base has gotten much better since back then. Sure, people probably spend more time reading up on each project, but that's of little use without understanding the surrounding market, the underlying technologies and subsequently the challenges to be faced. The result is still the same: millions of funds poured into projects that do not make any profits.
That's definitely my take on the huge ICO craze; people are buying into businesses that basically don't exist because they like the fact that the initial offering is crytopcurrency-based. The people selling these definitely aren't licensed investment advisers at this point. In fact, they're still prohibited from suggesting that their customers invest in cryptocurrencies; when I invested in bitcoin I mentioned it to my financial adviser and he was quite interested, enough that we had an hour-long conversation about it. He's invested in it a little bit himself, but whether he wanted to or not it would have been illegal for him to suggest to me that I invest in something that's not a legally-sanctioned security or something similarly licensed and regulated. The bubble aspect of it isn't going to stop me, of course, but it's going to limit how much actual cost basis I have at any given time. If the trends continue it should be quite possible to build up a larger stock of cryptocurrencies by ordering miners with previously-acquired coins, and the coins acquired will continue to appreciate until we all end up with bubble gum all over our faces. That should give plenty of opportunities for profit with very little initial investment if you play your cards right and make sure to know what you're investing in, and the alternatives and challenges, before you jump in. Sound advice on any investment market, of course, but even more essential with cryptocurrency. Don't be one of the people who bought the Useless Ethereum Token without knowing what it was, no matter how much of a jump in value it's taken since it was first introduced as being the most useless piece of vaporware to ever hit the market.
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