I think the main reason things have gotten so "calm" ,as you say, is that everyone is on the edge of their seats watching Bitcoins price and bigger traders are too busy getting raped by the 3-4 ico's popping up each week. I never understood why cryptotraders and exchanges support ico's, my reasoning is this: An ICO gets funded, then they do what, they SELL the BTC they raised for fiat and push the price dive on BTC, thus taking all those BTC out of the trade environment, anyone thinking that an ICO would reinvest into the exchange is naive. This hurts everyone, even the exchanges. You might say "Well the exchanges get fee's on ico" well that is true, but they are losing all future potential fee's on those coins, if they had continued trade on the market.
So in Short - ICO's are killing Crypto.
sorry for the rant, I think I might start a thread on this topic.
Yes, you're right. ICO's are responsible for a lot. Same with blatant scams too. These people should NOT need to build their software with pre-investment. You get awarded if the market finds what you've already created is decent. Selling people on hopes, dreams, and great ideas, is just bait. Especially when it comes to crypto.
Any IPO/ICO on premines is a completely unworkable model. It sucks money right out of crypto into fiat, there is a direct link there.
What crypto needs is education. Every bit of money someone loses to one of these faulted models, that investment is now gone, and they can no longer support a legitimate cryptocoin.
Someone needs to form an altcoin foundation, publically elected. Heavy investors will help fund it to see legitimacy being spread around. We'll inevitably get there, but only after a lot more hurt and pain by the community until everyone wakes up and is forced to reach a consensus.