That's true. In 2017, you could literally start a thread with the words "We are doing an ICO because we want to build stuff. We're real good at building stuff" along with a wallet address and nothing else and still raise a few BTC within one week! It was crazy.
Yes, it was special. No one was worried that at some point there were like 50 unicorn projects worth a billion Dollars or more.
that's why a lot of people lost a lot of money. you gotta be careful where you invest.