Great post Charlie - an important question too.
Too many people take offence at people powering down but for some early adopters sitting on huge fortunes it would be insane not to at least partially diversify their holdings IMHO. Powering down doesn't have to always mean money leaving the steem ecosystem completely as you pointed out.

The idea of a "passive" income for 2 years is very appealing (if I ever made it big), but to me this is a long term commitment and I plan to hodl for the immediate future at least despite the doomy looking price action. Its just noise, if this experiment works none of it will matter.

Loving your posts Charlie, and the way you're actually engaging and voting on others in the community - great to see :)

TLDR New arrivals should power up or hodl, elder whales are smart to diversify holdings and give the new folk a chance to buy in :)

Edit - This prompted me to powerup the ~$8 SBD I made from my last post - steemd link