It was costly (in the thousands). But yeah, especially costly relative to the high risks that existed due to a huge amount of uncertainty. People had no idea if the token would have value, whether it would get onto an exchange, or even precisely what the project was. To some extent it was blind faith in Dan.
And I agree the "start again" idea makes no sense. How many people in this community would go along with the idea of wiping out all of the history and prior effort? And why haven't they already tried it? Seems like they didn't need this crisis to take a whack at something like that. To me it just sounds like blind greed. People want to use an opportunity improve their position at the expense of others, without really understanding the consequences.