Wow! I also joined steemit in year 2016 and I was glad I did because I found so many friends who some of them, we still chat till today. Thank God you came back after your friend told you of his experience.
Oh wow! You’ve been here since 2016 too ?
But I guess you didn’t join with this your account.
This was the same account I used for steemit then but it's been inactive since I found Hive which I joined in March this year.
If you have an account on steem, you don’t have to re-register on hive. Hive is a fork of steem. So, you can login to hive with your steem account.
I misplaced my steemit login details then and I had to open another account on Hive.