I think in the case of an ICO, it's the investor's view that's significant. In that regard I assume each person who buys into an ICO considers their purchase as having been made with "money". Similarly, the ICO issuer wouldn't be requiring payment in something that wasn't "money" to them.

My point is, that when it's a corporate entity receiving the funds there's a potentially conflict of interest that is quite different from classic investment models. In the latter you're not "giving anything away". You pay, say $10,000 and you receive $10,000 worth of equity based on some agree valuation basis. 100% of the book value of your investment is accounted for.

However in the case of these ICO it's all fly by your pants stuff. You pay 100% book value funds and get something back that isn't 100%, 30%, maybe 70%. The balance of your investment - as I've stated earlier - goes towards jacking up the equity value of the ICO issuer.

Ok you could say that the investors valued the total asset at a premium over book value (happens all the time) but even then you're not getting it all going into your equity slice. The ICO issuers are not just executors of your money, they are now owners of it as well with not even a contract over what they are required to do with it. In fact the valuation wasn't even known until the ICO closed, it's a case of "we'll take as much cash as you can throw at us".

I'm not saying it won't necessarily work out for everyone in the end, but you're now at the mercy of markets to recover the loss on the book value of the investment.

I doubt people are going to be able to get away with this for very long with the amounts that are being thrown around in these ICOs now.