Many individuals were honestly astonished by the Filecoin ICO, for evident reasons. This venture raised US$257 million out of nowhere

Not really out of nowhere, this ICO is backed up by Juan Benet the inventor of IPFS which is not less than the decentralized protocol for file sharing that everybody speaks about (DTube, ...). So not a surprise to me. Even if it has already a few concurrents : Sia Coin, Maid Safe, Storj, LBRY ...