This is how startup economy works: someone creates the idea and develops initial plans/technologies and so on. Then there comes a time when he needs money to actually implement it and make it successful (because it never becomes successful without any money). So he goes to investors, asks them for money, receives a couple millions or not, depending on how good the idea is. And then he starts to really work on the project, hire people, rent an office and so on and so forth. Are Google or Apple or Amazon successful projects? Well, that is how they started: by asking others to invest money to be able to use it to implement ambitious plans and become successful.
And ICO is just an independent crowd-sourced and most importantly decentralized alternative to this. Yes, there are scammers, unfortunately, but many ICOs are truly aimed at making a world a better place without making themselves dependent on governments or financial institutions. And that seems like the way for digital immortality to go.