It's specifically trading and speculating in cryptocurrencies that's incredibly risky. There's a playbook of scams people used to pull with stocks were made illegal, but are suddenly viable again in the crypto space. There's also the risk of loss because of lax security on your part or the part of your wallet.
Seriously, crypto is one of the shadiest things you can get into. Avoid it, and any exchanges, like the plague. It's interesting tech, but nothing more than that. Hugely speculative and not worth wasting hard earned money over.
There were no ICOs in the last 2 years. The community moved on from that. Decentralized non custodial exchange usage is growing, like https://loopring.org/ that’s based on zero knowledge proofs cryptography and allows 2000 trades per second, and the people who built it can’t steal your money even if they wanted to.
Loopring is interesting, thanks for passing that along.
Even with the options on ethereum, Tether alternatives, etc. involvement with cryptocurrencies has high risk for someone who doesn't have a strong understanding of how it all works at a technical level, which is what the parent comment stated.
Sure, many of those won't be using ethereum, but they still happened. And that's before you dive into the IEOs and STOs, which appear to be more of the same.