This article already addresses this: "The scene does seem ripe for swindles and vaporware," but goes on to discuss it with more nuance. Perhaps we could do the same?
What happened to the maker spirit of HN, I wonder? I used to think it was the paragon of technological discourse, rather than simply a bunch of white collar workers all cozy with their barely six-figure incomes who think they are the beginning and end of innovation simply because they know how to string API's together and use google.
It makes me think of this community's nearly unanimous stance that code schoolers/bootcampers are bad hires and that a compsci degree is the end all be all when it comes to making a hiring decision. It's obvious that the devs who took a more traditional route feel threatened by the fact that learning to build applications is not as difficult as they think it is. If it was, code schoolers wouldn't be finding jobs in record numbers like they so obviously are.
And sure, ICO's are risky. It is probably not wise to put your life savings into one. So how do we make them less risky? What sorts of netsec lessons learned over the past 30 years can be applied to them to make them less so? How do we bring about the next major technological revolution and insure the future is something to look forward to rather than fear?
This community as a whole needs to climb down from its ivory tower and realize that innovative technology and ideas are what put them there to begin with.
I'm not saying we ought to blindly champion every new idea that pops up, but I do think we could be using our experiences to contribute rather than burying our heads in the sand and pretending that things can't or shouldn't change.