Agreed. What it says to me is they can't be trusted.
The coin has no store of value if they can just fork/swap and you lose it.
I think one of their adverts says to HOLD or HODL (I forget) the coin but why? That's what I did and now it's useless because of something they did on their part. They need to honor the previously mined coins. Particularly when these are the early investors that supported the project.
And so much for being decentralized.

I don't think you can.  I think you just lose those coins. So much for their advice to hodl the coin.
The legit thing to do would be to still honor those coins that were purchased or mined by people that supported the project early on.  Not sure if they'll do the right thing or just say too bad so sad.
And so if you buy new coins maybe they do the same thing in the future and fork to something else and... "too bad so sad" again    

I think he means to inform you that these are going for way cheaper now. ($1150 for machine and PSU)
Plus if you have a coupon you can get for $700 now.
Sorry for your loss.