As of now unless there are facts I’m currently ignorant of, Hive is simply a clone of Steemit with all the same benefits and detriments.
Hopefully this community is open to change and improving upon the platform.
I have wrote a follow up article to this one that provides solutions to some of the flaws in this platform and this solution addresses the problems you mention here.
I speak from my own experiences of buying BTC in order to get my hands on STEEM at the time. Where I made a purchase at local ATM that raped me for a service fee.