I say this because I personally have lost tons of eager prospective bloggers purely due to the atronomical gymnastics one has to endure to simply get registered.
Is it still so hard to register, there are plenty of gateways in, many of which are free and instant afaik: https://signup.hive.io/
I haven't registered anything through there myself though, as I have accounts spare.
Since i posted comment I stumbled across this site
https://hiveonboard.com/
seems pretty straight forward, have not tested though
Yep, there are several now and I think that one is listed in the signup page too