While i agree with some of these points....dont you feel that entirely writing off ICO's is a bit alarmist? Theres been many shady ICO's but with proper due dilligence most are easy to spot a mile away. Not to mention, ICO's can still certainly be profitable, especially in the long term if you are investing in a solid project with a realnlife use case. Then again though, ICO's really shouldnt be on a list for traders as they arent truly a trade and should be looked at as an investment
The other issue is the underlying asset. I cant disagree more with the assertion that there is no underlying asset in cryptos.
Bitcoin may not have an "underlying asset" besides a store of value but many others do. For example Ethereum's Network, ERC-20 standard, and smart contracts are all "underlying assets" which add monetary value to it, and its valuation is clearly not dependent in any way upon the initial capital of the project or its development costs. The same can be said for civic or any other crypto with a utility token that actually leverages the use of the blockchain in a manner that it gains an actual advantage over existing products or systems.
Not meaning to be contrarian, i just feel its a bit of a shortsighted view on blockchain technology, seemingly framed in the mindset of cryptos being nothing more than a "stock", not the vehicles of data distribution they are implemented as.