Yeh, money does not come from thin air, it is always coming from somebody's else's pocket: whether it is an inflation of our paper money (printing national currency) or a fractional reserve banking system (managed to give out 65X more credits than money in existence), government bonds, company IPOs, derivatives and many other creative forms of I-Owe-You (IOUs).
In comparison, cryptos allow us check out from that crazy paper (or digital) fiat money system. Cryptos are not IOUs, cannot be easily printed and all other things you already know.
As for HIVE vs Bitcoin - hard to say. Bitcoin is heavily manipulated via derivatives (futures on CME and more). HIVE is a very inconvenient crypto to manipulate, because much of it is being used in live operations. It is much easier to manipulate assets which are bought mostly for speculation (ex. Bitcoin).