> What the absolute frell is going on there I have no idea.
Money laundering? Flight capital? Under the table payments for services rendered in some other area?
I have no insider knowledge. It's just a speculation. But if even 10% of this actually exists in some liquid sense this is serious money. The number of participants in these markets is far lower than Kickstarter and yet the money in question here is massive.
I've read a few of these ICO white papers. They are largely jokes, total buzzword salad with little in the way of novel developments. There are a few ICOs that might actually be worthwhile experiments but the majority are ridiculous.
"If something makes no sense from a business perspective, maybe it makes sense in some other way."
I've heard that saying from multiple sources. Apparently it's a saying in the investigative world. It is said of perpetually money-losing yet eternally floated businesses, businesses that don't actually do anything yet seem to be moving a lot of money around for services rendered, and absurd-looking "investments" that raise money from weird sources.
Chinese or Russian flight capital is one very good possibility. There are a lot of very rich and often corrupt people who want to get money out of those countries without tipping off authorities and skirting currency controls and (in Russia's case) embargoes. One way of moving money illicitly is to basically execute a pump-and-dump or Ponzi scheme against yourself. The losing side is the sender, the winning side is the receiver. You lose some in the transfer but that's cost of doing business.
Vancouver recently enacted a foreign property speculation tax to curtail its ridiculous flight-capital-driven property bubble. There are rumblings of similar measures elsewhere. Perhaps other avenues for flight capital are being experimented with. There are hundreds of billions of dollars waiting to be expatriated from these countries.
Someone is always paying attention, especially when this kind of money flies around. I again have no inside knowledge but I can nevertheless say with 100% certainty that intelligence agencies and police agencies are watching.
In any case stay away. Stay far away from scams. A lot of people get deluded into thinking they can skim from these, but if you aren't an insider and don't know the timing you'll get fleeced.
Edit:
I've long heard the rumor that some obscenely big ticket sales of crummy WTF "art" are money laundering. "If something makes no sense..."