You are right to be wary, if there is a cryptocurrency element to a project I immediately stop paying attention because it is almost certainly geared towards inflating the token values through raising ridiculous amount of money.

The people that come out to defend those projects almost certainly owns token. How is this not an unregistered security?

There's a reason the Bitcoin developers:

- were anonymous

- released bitcoin weeks after the ruling on e-gold

- continues to remain anonymous

They clearly knew the implication of e-gold and US security laws.