I have never come across any ico that promise any crazy gains openly to investors, I don't know where you get that notion from, this grazy ideas was born from the experience of 2017,
Even if it was not openly mentioned, it was surely a background of 2017/2018 - crazy bitcoin gains, crazy altcoin gains. You want to tell me it was not a factor when people invested?
ico's where successful because people invested in them willingly without being on any pressure, I bet most project owners back then where not expecting to see such financial support, some couldn't handle it and got greedy, others try to make meaning out of their's,
no pressure? what about FOMO? you get one time life chance to get rich - is that not a pressure? From whole society, sometimes even family that expects you to succeed no matter what? That's enormous pressure right there, and you get a chance to be rich by investing in next bitcoin early. No pressure?? Huge pressure.
Yes, not North Korea type of pressure with gun pointed at your hand and someone telling you to invest, but also very very strong pressure.
Majority of projects turned out to be unsuccessful because there are no genuineness behind them, the teams saw unexpected money that they have no clue what to do with it, well except to squander
The truth is everybody wants to give and get something in return, nobody will be give away money for what they won't get any back, if people are fed up with ico's because of lack of
grazy gains - in your words - what makes you think they will be interested in given away money without caring what they do with it, you are still enriching the project owners nevertheless.
Probably there has to be some kind of reward promised, but not as high as it was. Even if it was not promised directly, I'm pretty sure 90%+ of investors hoped to get crazy rich.
Yes it was a factor but you should know that this does not just apply to investment in crypto only, anything that carries a lot of attention and hype normally attract people, lots of people where attracted to investing because of what they saw, but no project promise to anyone any
grazy gains after investing, people just assume about it.
FOMO is base on choice, if you let it be a pressure to you is entirely up to you, it is nothing similar to the other kind of pressure where you are not left with any choice, so tell me where is the pressure there? just human greed to make more profit can't exactly be regarded as pressure, Nobody will ever push you to invest what you can't afford, people taking high risk investment is their personal choice, no pressure from the project owners or from the crypto community whatsoever.