Let me give you an analogy that you might find interesting, between the crypto world and the financial world:
- Bitcoin would be gold.
- Previous successful ICOs are like the stocks on the stock market (except you cannot buy shares), existing businesses with an ongoing project.
- New ICOs are like businesses raising VC money.
Investing in the ICO stage of a new [Suspicious link removed]pany can be risky, like angel/VC investing can be. However, returns can be huge.
Buying tokens of existing blockchain projects, like buying shares of a specific company, is less risky, but still contains your investment inside a single entity. Possibility of huge returns is decreased by a lot.
At last, buying bitcoins, much like buying gold, is even less risky. Forget about any huge returns, but keeping for a long time might be an interesting investment strategy.
Of course, this analogy presents its own limits and should be taken with a grain of salt.