The term ICO is horribly misleading. It sounds like IPO, which generally is a liquidity event that happens after a company has become established. An ICO happens before there is a company or business, in any meaningful sense. But there is one similarity -- like an IPO, the sellers in an ICO are immediately liquid. What could go wrong?
From the article: "Note that most of these ICO-funded projects have not publicly launched yet." They probably took the money and ran.<p>The "DAO" crowd never delivered their Internet-enabled door lock, after two years of hype. (If you want an Internet-enabled door lock, most of the big lock manufacturers offer one.)
Bad actors don't invalidate the technology or the opportunities it brings about.<p>ICOs open access to funding to companies outside the usual VC-preferred areas and sectors. They also allow pretty much everyone to invest (though the ones that follow regulation tend to disallow participants from US that are not registered with the SEC).