Whatever happened to good old-fashioned IPOs?

[Mt. Gox]

I remember in the early days of altcoins when NXT did their IPO. It was a simple old-fashioned IPO. Yup, that's what we called it back then. An OP would write up a thread and we'd send little bits of a bitcoin to an address with a message attached. Then launch day would come, we'd start up our wallets, and receive our coins. Easy. Simple. No problem.

Nowadays it's all about Ethereum or one of its clones, ERC-20 tokens, DAOs, and exchanges. The word IPO itself is now gone - replaced by ICOs, ITOs, IEOs, STOs, IFOs, and IAOs. There is no longer a single OP. It ALWAYS has to be a team of people instead. Instead of simply sending BTC to an address, you have to make an account at an exchange or a service or a website or download a piece of software.

Whatever happened to the good old-fashioned IPOs of yesteryear?

[Jpti]

Over time everything gets changing and it is common phenomena. Once IPO was popular medium to collect funds. Now it has been replaced by ICO, and again ICO is being replaced by IEO or STO or whatever. IEO or STO has come as alternative to ICO, which was considered (falsely) as a way to promote scamming. But in fact, the project launching IPO, ICO, IEO or STO should be real and genuine.

[AltcoinsBattle]

Yep.
Apparently, this is due to the vulnerability of investors. As is the case with ICO. The term IPO came to cryptocurrencies from the stock market. In the cryptocurrency market, it was an IPO in the full sense.
I would not say that these clones. Crowdfunding develops. All these ICO, IEO, STO are supposedly designed to provide crowdfunding and investor protection. It becomes more secure, centralized. However, most new projects do not comply with the basic principles of cryptocurrency. The creators of these handicrafts just want to make money.