3. Crowdsales Allow Unethical Behavior
It is, in fact, immoral to sell dreams.
Why? Because humans have a “wishful thinking bias”. This means that we are more likely to believe a false thing, if that false thing is a dream. Therefore, all dream-sellers have the ability to deceive (“steal money from”) the credulous.
You see, while people should be able to invest in whatever they want, others should also be able to openly criticize bad investment-choices. Unfortunately, silence is often interpreted as implicit endorsement, and so this criticism is simply too rare (because criticism makes one unpopular). With a few notable exceptions (all of which are devoutly informal, and non-startup), most people are too selfish and/or afraid to do anywhere-near the right thing.
So, crowdsales allow predators to get away with the crime of selling a dream.
had a very interesting reading here... http://bitcoinhivemind.com/blog/crowdsales/
Generally if people are selling dreams they will use convoluted, long winded marketing speak and try to avoid giving clear simple answers to questions. Some crowdsales however are very good. Crypto and DACs are one of the most innovative and fastest growing sectors in the world & many will also positively benefit society.
The answer to your question lies in your own response. We should not be afraid to openly challenge & do due diligence on investments that we are unsure about. In the case of BTS, brand value by association can be very positive as we saw with Microsoft Azure. However there is a huge reputation & valuation risk to being associated with bad partnerships & crowdsales as we saw with Summer Announcements. (Also with projects like Banx many felt they were mislead about what they were investing in -
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,21657.msg284851.html#msg284851 )
So provided we make an effort to challenge projects and distance ourselves as a brand from the negative ones, even though they might be based on the BTS blockchain, I think some can be very positive for investors, society and BTS.