You mean an ICO that operates in an extremely competitive market, has no product to speak of, and doesn't leverage decentralized networks in any way, shape, or

You mean an ICO that operates in an extremely competitive market, has no product to speak of, and doesn't leverage decentralized networks in any way, shape, or form isn't a good investment? Who would have thought?! > that 40% of all coins in existence are owned by less that 1,000 people That was a terrible piece of reporting. The reality is that 1000 addresses hold about 40% of coins. Addresses are not identities; one person can have as many addresses as they want, and businesses (like exchanges) may have a single address that holds the vast majority of their cold storage. The upshot is that we don't know how well Bitcoin is distributed. Some of those large addresses are exchanges, and are indicated as such on many sites, or held by institutions. They hold large amounts of coin, yet represent the holdings of thousands of individuals. There are also several large addresses that are very similar (i.e. each containing a given number of coinbase rewards) and are very likely to be held by a single early miner. There are also some number of "Satoshi" coins held by the creator of Bitcoin. Some estimate that Satoshi mined ~1million coins, though there is nothing definitive about this figure. There are probably at least 100,000. Bitcoin market 'manipulation' falls into two categories: 'legitimate' manipulation that requires buying and selling coins in a bid to move market sentiment in their favor, and 'illegitimate' manipulation that requires inside knowledge of an exchange, such as full view of orderbooks for stop hunting, etc. The first kind exposes the manipulator to significant risk (especially from other 'whales', and is far less lucrative than many would believe. For a net gain, they must move the price in the opposite direction from their net buys/sells. The 'illegitimate' manipulator can only affect particular exchanges (insider trading, or else hacking), and thus you can choose an exchange you trust the most.