Buying BTS from STEEM isn't too hard. I've been buying some lately via OpenLedger. Yes, there are fees, but they are rather small. open.STEEM charges 0.2% which is less than many exchanges and the BitShares DEX fees are tiny. Whenever we transfer from one coin to another, we're going to have to pay someone to maintain those servers and supply liquidity. There's no free lunch, as they say.

What I haven't yet tried is getting registered with CCEDK so I could do direct wire transfers. I had a friend who tried and it was erroring out on him when uploading his identity documents. For now, I'm okay with using on ramps like Coinbase. If I buy via GDAX, then there are no exchange fees.