People take the invested money and do things with it. They make products and provide services. Public market speculation provides some secondary benefits such a

People take the invested money and do things with it. They make products and provide services. Public market speculation provides some secondary benefits such as liquidity - the stock market does not function very well if it generally takes weeks or months to pair a buyer with a seller. There is no product at the end of most of these ICOs - or at least, nothing commensurate with the amount raised. Most of them are purely speculative vehicles where money changes hands from ICO investors to second- and third-tier buyers. They are pyramid schemes that eventually collapse. Or the founders simply abscond with whatever they can. If there is a product at the end of a round of investment, the odds of it seeing the light of day are probably somewhat worse than kickstarter.