I have invested in 7 icos and I live in the US, I am not worried about any possible regulation of icos, simply because when the SEC does start to regulate the ones in the US that they say are securities, it will actually legitimize the crypto space. The SEC will have to admit
that Bitcoin and Ether are currencies, how can you buy a security with something that is not a currency? Plus I suspect it will take some time for the Sec to figure out how they are going to apply and enforce the rules and what the rules really are. For now they are just trying to scare new US icos into registering as securities. This is all about money the US government wants their piece of the pie, since this money raising is bypassing the government and they aren't getting any $$ out of it.

However it ends up, you might want to get in on some icos now because the government could ban us citizens from participating in unregistered icos at some time in the future under the guise of protecting the investors. Just like they have tried to do in online gambling. Then only the rich (accredited investors) will be able to invest in icos.

I actually started with $500, I bought ether twice with $250 each time when it was less than $10. You can see that eth is now at $160 and I have turned a total of a $900 investment into a crypto portfolio worth $8,300 as of today, with 13 different coins. I sold some ether when it was $50, $80 and $100 and used the profits to invest in other coins. I still hold 24 eth. You want to make sure to diversify and have several coins, that way if one goes down you don't lose all of your investment capital.

If I had $500 to start investing now, I would put $100 in 5 different coins that I researched and thought had good real world applications and future potential. And as I had more money I would either add to my 5 positions or start some new ones.

Here's how you know that there is a bubble in crypto, when you go to a party and everyone is takling about how much money they are making in cryptocurrencies, then sell all of your coins and go on vacation for a few months. Just like the stock market bubble when everyone was making so much money in stocks, then it crashed and they all lost their money. Or the housing bubble when strippers and plumbers had 3 houses each and were making sooo much money, when this happens there is no one left to buy. Nobody I know
has any idea about crypto, except that they heard about bitcoin. This market is currently valued at 68 Billion dollars worldwide, by comparison the stock markets worldwide total 70 Trillion dollars. If crypto rises to even 1% of stocks it would be hundreds of billions of dollars, this market has a lot of room to run over the next few years.

it is called speculation, not gambling. One of the big differences is that in gambling you do not have an advantage over the casino, they have the edge on you. In speculation you are taking an educated risk that something will happen based on study and investigation. For instance I might look into an alt coin and see that they have an actual  business that is making money and has investors that are big players in startups, so I say that I believe this will be a winner over the long run. So I put say $500 into this idea over time, if I do this with say 10 coins that I think will be winners over the long term. I am creating a portfolio of coins I believe will be good investments over the long run. I don't need them all to be big winners, but if just a few are and produce large returns my speculation will pay off big time.

The coin prices moved up so fast the last couple of weeks a correction was inevitable, I noticed this on Wed when my coin portfolio jumped several thousand dollars in just a few days. Don't panic now, just slowly buy the coins that you like as they go down, that way you will have more coins when the prices move up even higher when the correction is over. Of course you have to have some capital available to buy with, so you want to sell off some coins when they reach new highs and wait for pullbacks to buy. When everyone thinks that alt coins are done the correction will be over and the next leg up will begin. Don't be one of those who sell at the bottom and buy back in when the prices have moved up a lot.

I agree and I just bought more XRP, XEM, STEEM today, this is a normal correction of 25 or so percent. Seems steep in such a quick time, but the alt coin market is going up at 100s and even 1,000s% since the end of last year. So a 25 to 50% correction is just a drop in the bucket for many coins that are up over 1,000%.