Is it possible to invest in POB tokens with fiat/crypto money, and by-pass the Hive side of things entirely?

I am actually thinking about setting up a POB/LEO trading-pair liquidity pool.

That would allow folks to use fiat to buy LEO, then buy POB with LEO. You can get wrapped LEO through the Ethereum network (as wLEO) and through Binance Smart Chain (as bLEO).

However, liquidity pools require a LOT of liquidity in order to accommodate even modestly sized purchases (e.g. about 100x is required). For example (assuming my calcs are correct) an LP with 30,000 POB would have quite a bit of slippage (e.g. 4% or so) with transfers involving 500 POB.