although the concept and idea sound nice, there isn't any news update on their website since early May, not much on twitter either while maidsafe have consistent update. I haven't done any deep research but it seem not good for a project that haven't had any news in nearly a month
Exactly so why the steady increase in prices. Is it all hype for their July 1st launch
Hype??? LoL where?? Shift is not releasing words, only test products at the moment. Hype from whom?
Those who are buying are the early adopters, later Shift team will release all the things you like to see like whitepapers and stuff

maybe then you can start to buy if you like

Are you sure of this? I already bought because I read some posts about a July 1st launch of some sort. I also bought because I read they're linked to Lisk which prob is a good thing. I'm not sure if this is true though
I only know this, when Phantom is well tested and is well received in mainnet Shift team will start to promote Phantom and release the documentation about it.
Also, as you mentioned, with the features of Lisk code base, Shift will have its first Dapp (I heard is ready and in internal tests), so Phantom is the first release but you should wait what it is comming next, maybe more
