Is the ICO is an illegal confidence scam because an ICO is a genuinely novel thing to do or just because the issuers were criminals? I would argue for the latter.
Assume a non-criminal company filed the correct paperwork to issue a bond, set normal terms for when and for how much the matured bond could be redeemed, and then somehow legally allowed it to be traded on a blockchain instead of on a traditional exchange. That's just a corporate bond, right? The fact that it's on a blockchain doesn't make it special.
Tone is hard to convey online, so let me clarify that I am arguing that all ICOs are illegal, with the absolute best case being that the issuer is "just" a scofflaw selling an unregistered security and flouting all relevant regulation.
