$185M in 5 days: Block.one sets new ICO record with its EOS token (opens in new tab)

Very much so. The true con men and fraudsters have smelled blood in the water and are now gathering together a few token coders and a collection of cribbed marketing catchphrases to test out the limits of the greater fool theory.

Not a single one of these ICO-backed companies will be an ongoing endeavor in five years.

The way I see it, all asset classes are inflated: stocks are at nosebleed P/E ratios, bonds have next to no yield, house prices are once again at historic levels, and Silicon Valley unicorns are again getting unrealistic valuations. There's a lot of money sloshing around the economy looking for return. It's no wonder some of it ends up in cryptocurrencies.

There are a lot of virtual asset holders that don't want to convert to money because of paying taxes, waiting to the day they don't have to at all. Some of them having so much that they can afford a few thousand ether, just to diversify and play lottery in the next big pump game. The project has someone known in the crypto-world behind it, and the claim is it will solve the speed, performance and transaction fee problems of major virtual assets. I guess they think this is enough assurance that it will offer some substantial ROI in the next bullish period of the crypto market.

As someone from that era, this seems much worse. It just seems like a scam to me. I keep noticing this trend that whenever there's a sudden drop in the price of a cryptocurrency the exchanges in question conveniently go offline. Seems a little more than coincidental. It's too easy to manipulate. Especially with the new trend of ICO's offering a "new" cryptocurrency built around their exchange. What happens to the currency if the exchange goes belly up? Plus they don't even have it working yet. No code, nothing. Even the write up in the article seems suspect.

"It would be able to process millions of transactions per second with no transaction fees."

"...namely transparency, security, process integrity, speed and lower transaction costs"

Which is it? None or lower? And lower than what? Pick one! It's like the old adage "A fool and his money are soon parted." If it sounds to good to be true, it's because it is.

It is well on its way to dwarf it.

There are no dividends paid on holdings. That would make it a security and fall under regulation.

Most ICOs stipulate that in their T&C that tokens are to be regarded as without value. Yet they put up a big dog and pony show about selling them. To think that this absolves them of responsibility is a bit naive, in my opinion.

This particular token is a clear cut example. Block.one will build another altcoin. There is no code yet, only a whitepaper that on the face of it seems to promise the impossible (all the functionality you can think of at a million times the throughput). To finance this they will sell this EOS token, which is explicitly stated not to be exchangable for their future altcoin product or have any other use.

It might be of interest to note that the person behind this is not new to the game. This is his third crowdfunding scheme, and the first two products are far from what was promised. As to why people invest your guess is as good as mine, but the greater fool theory is a good starting point.

There was a podcast(1) about part of your question recently. Essentially, people are playing with "house money" as they have generated net gains from BTC and other coins. Instead of incurring a taxable event by cashing out, they might just be pouring it into ICOs.

(1): https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/unchained-big-ideas-from...

Look at the recent ICOs. The companies usually have little to none to offer, Mysterium, Gnosis, Bancor. People only buy hoping the coin will be included on Poloniex. Worked for Gnosis, investors saw huge returns. Yet the technology is all not existent, stay away for the tech. Before these things actually launch you can buy coins, but until they launch its all just gambling.

When fools are rushing to buy your pipe-dreams what does it benefit you to limit the supply? You are making the mistake of believing that these are not simple pump-and-dump scams wrapped cryptocurrency clothes.