The money isn't meaningful and I'm 100% ok losing every dollar because I can't justify putting significant money in. That being said, I do know people who have made very significant money over the last year because everything keeps doubling.
Genuinely curious how do you know or assess that etherum or any other ICO will do well in the future ? Isn't there an equal or greater chance of the currencies collapsing ?
My friends, who are more interested in the space than I am, compare where crypto is now to the beginning of the internet. We're still trying to determine who's netscape/AOL/amazon/google and to some degree, what the underlying protocols are (tcp/ip = ethereum?).
Honestly, I don't see the true value of the blockchain yet. Most of the proposed ideas could be cool, but have no value or aren't practical. What I do see, however, is increased attention in Japan and Latin America. In the US, I think it's coming into mainstream attention. And if we find one real use case that allows mainstream adoption, it will be huge and transformative.
As a former trader, I don't mind speculating on the hype, but if we're still on the "ground floor" of what crypto could one day be, a little speculation could be a huge investment one day.