The biggest problem with altcoins is that it can't stop those scams. There is currently no effective regulation for scams, so investors easyly to be deceived. Real projects will also be lost money because of many scams, so that the price performance in the market is not ideal.
scam happen everywhere, trust me, even the regulated ones like initial public offering (IPO) sometimes being used to scam people and as a money grabber.
It's just really hard to prevent such thing from appearing since there's some people that always have bad intention so better watch yourself. If im being honest, other fundraising method like kickstarter and crowdfunding impose the same risk.
I agree that other investment opportunities bear similar risks despite having limited or zero transparency. I invested in a startup and it is hard to engage with the CEO directly, similar case with kickstarter or other platforms...in crypto you can talk directly to the team and many CEO likes the one at Sparkster or Oyster will respond to you, they engage with their community directly.