I think the handling of the pre-sale reflects a sign of inexperience rather than malice. The devs are funding themselves from the presale rather than from the ICO-type of hype we normally see. In other words, my understanding is that the devs are not using the siacoin to fund the project's development. The focus of siacoin is as a medium of exchange to be used within the sia network. The real value to the coin is in the technology.

Also, I don't see Sia as a full competitor to Azure or AWS. Those services offer remote infrastructure and processing in addition to data storage. Sia is closer to DropBox or the local ISP that offers mailbox storage. A distributed or network database could be built on top of Sia but that is not the focus of the current development. Sia could be described as Torrent in reverse.

Unforutnately, Sia had to create some degree of hype to attract early buyers into Obelisk in order to raise funds as delivery won't happen for another year. I do agree that Sia should have established a phased purchases offer that advantages early adopters.

The most likely reason for Sia's current poor showing has mostly to do with the bearish market rather than Obelisk itself and Sia large float which turns off many alt-buyers. These weak hands are being flushed out which results in Sia's lower price.

Utilimately, the gamble is in Sia's technology and adoption. Obelisk does look like an interesting way to accumulate a large amont of Siacoins for a relative modest investment but right now with the price this low you could just purchase the coin outright because you are tying up your money for a year. Saying that however, if I had the cash on hand right now I'd buy an Obelisk because of the risk to potential rewards.