I first didnt like your article much, since you stressed it a lot that it is a bubble which is going to pop. While you dont take a look at value and price... if the value does not catch up to the price, it will pop. However, that was not the topic.
What is very much true is, that someone with 100 Mio.$, is happy with a stock or bond market giving you 1 to 10% returns annually. If you can save 10$ a month, the return is non existent in that market. With crypto however and it returns, it can change your wealth.
I would like to add two points:
- Cryptocurrencies are giving you your financial freedom back, as you control the money and no one else. If you want to safe 10$ a month in a stock portfolio, fees are going to eat ALL your investments. I have to pay about 15$ a month to sustain a portfolio at my bank.
- Cryptocurrencies give you the ability to invest with small sums like venture captial. Today it is not possible in the US to invest if you dont have like an annual net income of 200.000$ at least. No matter how smart or good you are at it. With ICOs you can at least participate at the economic system of a new company and I am not sure if ICOs in the future couldnt be also offering company shares, if they comply with security laws... might be easier than to try design your token in a way, that it wont be considered a security.
As you mention, the focus of the video is not proving Bitcoin is a bubble (which is a much larger task I intend to take on in the future). Smaller investors can use apps like Robinhood to get involved with stocks for zero fees, although they have limited options (e.g: no retirement accounts). While it is true that 10% figure is small when working with small amounts, I am concerned if this mentality will be moved over to people who have larger accounts. I have some faith it won't, but human nature has always disappointed me so...
The problem with a lot of ICOs is while they are a novel fundraising mechanism, they are used instead to fund ideas that are either not realistic or so far from execution that many people aren't evaluating and paying an appropriate amount for the token. However, this is likely more the result of euphoria than anything else and we will likely see more legitimate projects as the hype slows down and capital dries up.
I am also highly skeptical of most ICOs, however if you do some good research you can find very good and promising projects. VR and Augmented Reality was the big thing last year, but they got almost no funding. Because there is no bubble for that industry. For blockchain projects there is a bubble and therefore funding is abundant. This WILL create a few big companies.
Additionally take a look at ICOs like BeeToken, who use the hype around ICOs to get a lot of people involved, promoting their business. In traditional assets, a company looking for funding is in a conflict of interest. They have to please their investors, who want to make money and its customers. You could say, that some companies are just doing enough, to not loose their customers. With ICOs, investors can become customers and investors would be interested to get the company more customers, because this will increase the value of their investment (and thus its price).