Who Wins and Who Loses?

[xpld]

Hi everyone, I'm new in this forum as well as in crypto. I've been reading, researching and learning. I have one fundamental question which I hope someone will answer for me.

So there are lots of different coins and tokens, some of which do pre-sales. In most cases a coin starts low. A dollar, a cent or even fraction of a cent. And then BOOOOM they skyrocket in value.
My question is: Where does that value come from? In case of a good ICO, every investor as well as the owners (creators) benefit massively when the price goes up 100x, 1000x or more. This isn't a bank, the money doesn't appear from thin air, something has to compensate it, right? So if everybody wins, who loses?

Thank you.

[Higher Altitude]

Obviously the people who come in late and pay a premium for the same coin.

If you join the ICO from the beginning and invest $1000 at $0.01 per coin you get 100'000 coins.
The person who joins a year month later pays also $1000 but because the coin is now $1 they only get 1000 coins. All that money of those new people gets distributed among the people who joined early and they "take profit".

If you are unlucky as a late investor the whole thing is a pump & dump coin designed to take your money so the carpet gets pulled from under you.

And to be fair the people who invest in the very beginning take a lot of risk because the project may not succeed in the first place and the developers disappear with a lot of ICO money poorly spent.

That is why it's 10 times more important to DYOR on ICOs than it is on big marketcap coins.

[seizetehday5]

It is a zero-sum game out there for the most part and knowing that yeah somebody has to lose in order for others to win. That is why it is important to know your limits and to play within them. More important than that is not chase your losses as that can be tempting thing to do as well. Protect yourself is the number one rule, winning is gravy.

[rayk]

I think value comes from nowhere but the belief it will rise in the future, most are utility token but there is no platform etc. you can take benefit of the token after ico finishes, no one pay such prices to a token which will be used in a platform before that platform is created.

[seo-maestro]

New people come in crypto and buy - that is why everybody wins now. When new people finish - last entered will lose