Why is FTC worth $1.75M? Why are PND and QRK worth ~$1.2M ea.?  How about the re-launch of Fuelcoin with it's 50% premine... which is worth nearly four times as much?
For that matter, despite definitely having much more 'built out' (as they should considering their age/investment capital) why are LTC and XRP worth ~125X and 275X respectively, as much?

Because that is what the market is willing to pay for them. Period.  Or I guess more to the point, people invest precisely in new ventures because at one time they were all worth almost nothing at all including BTC.  So investing a few hundred or perhaps thousands of dollars into a venture which has a decent potential of becoming a similar valuation in a year or so is a pretty amazing opportunity.

As long as you aren't investing money which you cannot afford to risk, and have confidence in the devs and the concept/goals of the coin - is anything else (especially in the first week or so) really all that critical?  God knows there's been billions of investment capital funneled into projects/businesses that had far less to go on... at least anyone that was investing in the late 1990's should know of a few thousand.  Basically, anything that was web-centric got a $50M+ IPO... and most of them turned into Pets.com, WebMD, or MarketWatch.com... seeing a surge of 200%-500% in their first few weeks... only to be bankrupt or worth a tiny fraction of that amount 1-2 years later.  Many had an IPO with little more than a Powerpoint presentation and an MBA or two on their boards - no customers, no stores, no inventory... nothing but a concept.

However, some of those investors throwing money at a number of totally unknown IPOs in those days bought Amazon, Ebay or Priceline at less than $20 per share each.  If they held even a decent amount through the "I told you so..." crash in 2000... they've seen 2,000% to 10,000% gains from those holdings over the past 10 years.  That's the whole point in investing and speculation in general.  If you want a proven commodity prior to investing anything - then just invest in the index itself and hopefully get 5-10% gains per year on average (after all it's not without risk either... it's just mitigated by diversity and volume).  In crypto terms that would mean just buying BTC and holding only it - don't even bother looking at anything else.

On the other hand, since BTC already went from pennies to ~$370/BTC (still a massive gain for early adopters, back when it had nothing but a concept to go on).  Despite losing close to 75% of it's value from the top, I still consider my BTC to be the best "random chance" I've ever thrown pocket-change at.  I doubt there's much of a chance of it hitting $37K per BTC anytime in the next 2-3 years (or likely ever for that matter).  It's more likely that something with a great idea and some dedicated talent behind it can go from $0.001 to $0.1 or even $1.00 - which will get you every bit as much or more of a return if it happens.

The bottom line is this: If you believe in the coin/concept/venture then invest what you can afford to risk.  If it seems interesting but you're suspicious/hesitant, then check back in a few months.  If you're positive it's just another scam/fraud then move along and don't look back.

Only time will tell who is right and who is wrong - but debating it over and over in the thread is not terribly productive either way IMO.