This is the nature of token sales. The crypto market caps are small enough that it just takes the few billionaires interested in these platforms to scoop up large portions of the market.
As this tech matures, i think that more fair token distributions models will appear. Someone could make an EOS clone with very specifically fair distribution models, but ultimately this will only be possible when more of the world is interested in crypto/blockchain.
As for your reddit link, it feels suspicious but really how does it amount to any thing else but arbitrage bots? The market is 24/7 and is what is driving the price at this point, not the crowd sale.
There is no reason to use a complicated website dealing with "scary" smart contracts when you can just buy it on a handful of exchanges (and as a US resident). So naturally the price before the last minute will be low, because there is no incentive to buy tokens that way (and bots will naturally compete until there is no profit).