While I agree with your sentiment.... Bungie made choices, yes. Were those choices deliberate? It doesn't seem likely. With faction not playing an actual role in this game, the choice to bind faction rep, vanguard and crucible marks only serves to slow the pace of character levelling/unlocking. If THAT choice was made deliberately, then they failed to make strange coin bind in time for release, the same can be said for glimmer. The design decisions are not cohesive, which just points to the enormous scramble before release to repackage the content on hand into a 8-12hr campaign with future DLC, which makes the game more accessible (to various demographics) and in line with other successful games on the next gen.

That's a plausible theory, but there are other interpretations that fit the facts. We can only speculate as to the Developers' intentions. Where you see a lack of cohesion I see an elegant system that lets your characters work together to progress.

Progress is attaining legendary gear that suits your play style, and then when the stars align finally getting an exotic that sets your character apart, it's the cherry. With the current system, you have to get a minimum of 6000 vanguard rep to buy legendary armour, and further play is required to grind enough currency. There may also be 1-2 other factions that have a piece of gear you want for your 'perfect build'. By the time you grind out all that rep and currency for each character, you'll have acquired enough strange coin to buy every single exotic weapon and amour piece for each alt. character. That's not progress, that's broken. Exotics should be last, not first. In fact, there is a higher probability that you'll spend your nearly pointless motes on an exotic engram, only to roll an exotic for a class you don't even play, before you acquire a legendary piece for your primary character. Utterly broken progress system.