This is somehow bizarre to me also. Platforms like this should have a hassle-less signup method but this one seems to have the opposite procedure for it. My friend also signed up for Steemit 5 weeks ago but he still is waiting for the confirmation of a successful signup. I just can't fathom the reason behind these delays. People will not use this project if the first process takes too long compared to the other platforms.
One quick question, do they have a live statistics for its user-base and where we can check it?
What also strikes me as a bit weird is that the username I signed up with shows up as available if I try to sign up again, but I get an error message when I input my phone number, saying it has already been used. So this is kind of sending me mixed signals, some parts of my signup has been registered, other parts have not. Very odd.
Reading the FAQ gave me the impression that I could somehow sign up "manually" by purchasing tokens of their currency and paying some sort of signup fee. This would probably be more instant, but Ḯm not sure what kind of cost we are talking here. If it is just a trivial ammount I'd consider doing that instead.