The knock on the coins is that the offerings are nothing more than the so-called greater-fool theory of markets playing out in the cryptocurrency world. “The investing public is mostly clueless,” said Francis Pouliot, who runs an information center in Montreal called the Bitcoin Embassy and has been critical of the coin-offering trend. Even coins from startups with good prospects could be “bad investment decisions,” says Mr. Pouliot. For instance, a startup could eventually decide to cut the price of future tokens to boost the mainstream appeal of its product, hurting the value of outstanding coins.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-a-bitcoin-clone-helped-a-company-raise-12-million-in-12-minutes-1495018802