It is a fair question.

Remember that in crypto people's attention span is 2 weeks max aka "honeymoon period". The dev therefore has to maximise price during this period because after 2 weeks people start to look around to other coins and many speculators move their money to fresh coins where most of their money can be made. If the speculators feel that the devs momentum is slowing down, then the chances of volatility and high volume reduces and lower volatility and lower volume means a lower opportunity for profit. A dev therefore has to make a choice - on the one hand he can start a coin with a bang running at 100mph or he can start the coin running at 10mph. The advantage of the first option is that he is seen as a dynamic and committed dev and the price can skyrocket in the beginning. The disadvantage is that all energy is exhausted quickly and a slowdown from 100mph to 50mph is easily noticed and leads to all sorts of questions about the slowdown. The price will also start to taper down after a quick rise, since the price is linked to hype. This can be compared to running a 10 mile race but sprinting during the first 30min until you are tired. Alternatively a dev can start things slower but have good news spread it out a little bit. The second option could perhaps extend the honeymoon period a little and cause less questions about delivery.  The second option could be a race winner and have a more gradual price increase.  Pump groups would like the first option as it would skyrocket the price on hype for them to take their profit and move on. Long term investors would favour the 2nd option. In the case of Swift the dev played most? of his cards in the first day or two probably hoping for a massive quick price rise. The dev chose to start the race at 100mph and now he has to maintain the pace or face the risk of questions and inevitable FUD about a pace decrease.

In addition, real value is based on delivery and adoption. Any price increase not based on working functionality, rollout, adoption and real life use is pure speculative, fake and empty. Feature delivery is just a temporary factor to maintain investor interest and maintain a level of belief in the dev until the real life use and adoption can kick in. It is during the period after the honeymoon ends until rollout and adoption that most if not all coins fail. Also, when a POS coin is evaluated, compare apples to apples meaning compare it with other POS coins. Many people in here compare Swift to BTCD or DRK. It is completely different because those coins are POW which have different attributes affecting the price.