I think ICOs will continue to grow because it's the easiest way to make money on all of the new people coming into btc. Once btc his over $22,000 the world around started to really pay attention and that's why people that don't know much about altcoins want to be apart of the next big jump. Most people want to buy bitcoin but not at $18k a coin. People want to start in at pennies and be millionaires or maybe just retire from the daily grind after selling their coin. That's why ICOs will be around for awhile but once too many grandmas and grandpas loose their retirement funds the governments will collectively step in.
Just these past few weeks I looked at a few ICOs and they will not allow people from the U.S. or even China to participate. Why well if they're a scam which is highly likely they are the U.S. will step in and they'll be in prison.
http://fortune.com/2017/12/04/cryptocurrency-bitcoin-sec-ico-scam/Just to take a snippet from the article :
"A new division of the Securities and Exchange Commission dedicated to so-called “initial coin offerings” (ICOs) filed its first charges on Friday, targeting a scam that reportedly raised $15 million from thousands of investors by promising a 13-fold profit in less than a month."
"In a criminal complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court, the new SEC division, known as the Cyber Unit, describes how Dominic Lacroix sold digital tokens known as “PlexCoins” as part of a purported plan “to increase access to cryptocurrency services” across the world."
"The token sale was a blatant rip-off, according to the SEC, which says Lacroix, who resides in Canada, has repeatedly broken securities laws in the past."
“This first Cyber Unit case hits all of the characteristics of a full-fledged cyber scam and is exactly the kind of misconduct the unit will be pursuing,” said Robert Cohen, Chief of the Cyber Unit, in a press statement. “We acted quickly to protect retail investors from this initial coin offering’s false promises.”
