I've had this happen at other sites to me, but they all allowed me to change the password as long as I could authenticate (verify) that I'm the owner of the email that was used to sign-up for the account in question.

I too use KeePass (KP) and write the password details down, triple and quadruple checking to make sure that I write them down correctly and that the password stored in KP is the one that's stored with the site as the password being used with my account, so I knew for a fact that I wasn't in the wrong in all cases.

I really hope that you find a resolution that will at least get your monies back.

I think something like a "2 factor verification" like Coinbase uses would work perfectly for Steemit. Make it so that you have to verify both that you own the email associated with the account and the phone that is associated with it (by texting the big string of numbers that they send to that email in order to verify your identity). I don't know how something like this could be coded into Steemit, or if it can even be done, but I know for sure that it would give Steemit users much greater peace of mind knowing that they have that as an option if the shit hits the fan.

I don't think that it's too much to ask from the developers that there should be some type of fail-safe built into the system of users and passwords, just in case something like what's happened to you occurs. Based on my experience, these weird kind of situations pop up a whole lot more than we'd like to believe that they should (ideally, never), so it only makes sense to have that fail-safe, especially with such high investments being placed into this and what we all hope to be future investors with big pockets.