Iridium has a quick emission curve incentivizing early miners. This turned out to be beneficial for the fair distribution of coins, since the first eight months were mined exclusively by home CPU/GPU miners, and there is much less block reward now to be snatched by the incoming CryptoNight ASICs. The latter will of course get forked out of the chain very soon with the next HF.

Regarding price, you have seen nothing yet. IRD will be at $0.50 in no time. The same as Masari (which will easily go to $2.50 within the same time frame). To those early miners: I hope you hodl and have not sold for pennies in the past. You will cry if you did.