To be fair, Steemit lost far more on the Hive side than they gained from Bittrex, but the whole thing was definitely a mess.

Yeah - fair point.

but the Hive chain emptied the wallets of anyone who voted for more than 2 of the Sun/Steemit-aligned witnesses (or maybe 2 or more, I forget now).

I don't know at what point anybody thought that this was a good idea. And I suppose that some sort of retaliation was inevitable. It's no wonder that 2 years on, there's still so much bitterness about it.