Thanks for putting in all the time to research! It's so easy to scam here... My mentor always says:

"It is crazy easy to earn a small amount of money at hive"

And with a little bit of scamming talent, there's so much more to make. I like that you trust first, I'm the same, and have burned myself many times. Do you think it is easier because it's something that you earned while having fun, while writing? Do you think you'd be as trusting if it was a person you didn't know, but wanted 100€ sent to their PayPal or something?

For me it still is. I don't have that big investment in Hive yet, most comes from writing here. Working on turning that around, though...