[ryan_lane]

ICOs were being used by VCs to do rug pulls. Everyone buying at the ICO lost everything.

DeFi promised absolutely insane interest rates, built on a house of cards. When the cards collapsed, everyone who invested in them lost everything.

The issue isn't that they've selectively enforced things, it's that regulation is slow moving, and they can't keep up with the rate of new scam technology that comes out of crypto.

To be honest, I don't see a significant difference between meme coins and ICOs. In a lot of the cases, the person who creates the meme coin is the one who reaps the most profit during rug pulls. Some meme coins have been around for such a long time that they're mostly used for pump/dump, but a lot of them are effectively ICOs under a different name.

[ryanschaefer]

Some were, but then again Ethereum was an ICO as was XRP.

Again with DeFi, some were just Ponzi schemes (see SBFs infamous box token comments) but it also gave us Uniswap and Compound. These at least allow you to take directional bets on crypto so you can make money on its downfall.

> and they can't keep up with the rate of new scam technology that comes out of crypto.

There’s really been no innovation in scams recently. Just highly promote a smart contract token you can buy early on then dump it.

> but a lot of them are effectively ICOs under a different name.

They explicitly cannot promise to do anything economically productive with the offering because that fails the Howey test.