buying in ico has a good advantage that is a cheap price, but buying in ico has a big risk that we have to make choices and more selective towards ico that we will support. while buying btc we are definitely buying a good and potent coin, so if you are a beginner I recommend buying btc.
Absolutely there is high risk in investing ICO than of buying btc directly. And most like that people are losing their investment if a certain ICO get scam, we know is just a horror and it already happen now. That's why, if we are planning to invest in ICO we should have to spend time reading the entire details about the project and never put all the money in a single investment.