I am not sure which article(s) you read from the SCT, but I also agree with most of your conjectures.

I expect that both Steem and Hive will go down. I wonder who would put his USD/bitcoin to buy them. On the other hand, it is clear that there will be lots of selling pressure - people who hate current steem will sell, and people who are skeptical about Hive will sell (it was free airdrop so they even may not care about the price).

Based on this (and more), I expect that division would hurt all (in terms of price). So I tried to aid negotiations but it seems that compromise is not coming.