Things can be unfair or a bad deal, or simply a failed offering without being a scam.  I too might too easily lapse into the language of "scam" around here, — and there is no shortage of actual ill motivation in the altcoin space— but I do think more of it is really people getting in over their heads.  Cryptosystem work is very difficult, and Bitcoin seems to have resulted in people thinking that creating this stuff is no big deal since they can just copy the code... but in a cryptosystem the details matter, greatly... a single line changed can have subtle effects that ruin the security properties completely.

Hm?  Thats pretty weird, considering that I've said nothing positive about Bitcoin here, and only positive things about cryptocoins (and proposed cryptocoins) that I have had basically nothing to do with.