I don't know, honestly. The information I've been able to dig up on the subject is that the internal price of Steem/SBD's is based on the reflections of a 3 day average on the overall market price. But, I don't know if I really believe that to be the case or not, since as we can see, one exchange has raised the overall price on coinmarketcap while all the others are floating around $1.80-1.84 right now. I don't see SBD's going up to $3.22 because of that one exchange having ridiculous prices going on right now.
But, hey, I'm a fucking noobie with this kind of stuff and would love to be proved wrong. Like, seriously, please let SBD's go back up to over $3, lol.
Could I have transferred my SBD to that specific exchange in order to cash it out and gotten more for it?
Depends on the exchange I reckon, as some are closed off where you can only join with an invitation where it's a private exchange. I'm sure some exchanges have limited ability to transfer your coins around as well, where you might have a hard time cashing out on coinbase or sites like that. I honestly don't know much about HitBTC, personally.
Again, I should mention that this is just conjecture from a noobie. I really hope someone who knows their shit will pop in here and chime in for us.
Thanks for you sir