I think many of them were, yes. Not in the sense that the company founders we're trying to scam investors but in the sense that VCs and the banks involved in their IPOs hyped them up and dumped them on the public market despite knowing how little of substance was going on.

Basically the people that should have known better were happy to promote garbage to those who don't know better.

The same thing happened again in 2008 with mortgage derivatives and now I think we're headed for round 3 with crypto.