Good ideas and theories, here...

I think there's an interesting double-edged sword here. Hive has much more dApp development going on, so there is lots of activity but that development is funded by the DHF to the tune of thousands per day, most of which gets sold because all those developers see it (and rightfully so) as salary not as an investment. So there is constant sell pressure, in a way Steemit doesn't experience.

It's ironic, because Hive is a lot more "feature rich" than Steemit, with its own video, insta, twitter and other clones, as well as a number of fairly good freestanding games... but the very mechanism that made all that possible is what's contributing to the stagnant token price.

I expect the fact that Steemit- in a very general sense - is friendlier towards Asian users probably also has an impact on the situation.