As there is another million people bootstrapping their businesses. What they should do is to find additional criteria to augment the startup validation process. A very simple criteria would be to maintain a front-facing service that provides value to consumers, excluding: bitcoin mining, run malware, etc.
And who verifies these things? How often? And by what rules? And why bother, when just limited it to accelerator startups is much easier and most likely will pick up the majority of successful long term startups anyway? I don't like it either, but it's obviously a logical move.
By screening for "you are in an accelerator" you not only have ensured some due diligence has been done, but you also know someone else's money is on the line, so they will keep tabs on them.
