Well, I am not very sure, but I think I saw a countdown to the halving somewhere in binance and from the information there, the halving is expected on April and not may as you said or suggested.
Anyways, aside this one, I think alot of altcoins projects are also waiting on the side as well, for the halving and possible bull run to commence so they can start or begin some actions that will capture the attention of investors, this possibly the reason why almost everything pumps during a bull run, because it's hard to know or differenciate a coin or token with good utility and one without any utility but driven by pure speculation.
And this is also why I would always say that the bull run is the worst time to buy or invest in any project, wise investors do their research now and invest in good coins or tokens, when bull run comes, they sell while others are buying, many people end up with sh*t load of altcoins bought during bull run, and most times end up selling it at a loss after the bull run is over, or possibly hodl it to death.
So for me, would have been best they distribute their token now, so they know their price base.
Just my opinion though.
Then again, in the bullrun, people who get the airdrop wouldn't have been invested per se, but there would be definitely people investing. Meaning, like you said, they would be most likely buying overpriced tokens. And i myself wouldn't mind as they would be buying from us.
I don't have an opinion about the public sale, that's apparently happening with SHFL as well, because i don't have enough data on that, but i feel that's a little iffy, and i don't get why they would need to do this. If they indeed are selling them against crypto.
And it's not like everyone would be dumping at once. These 3 reasons are enough for many people to hodl or even buy more. Especially buyback and burn with fixed supply sounds juicy.