The real reason some people are asking for a quicker power down is because experience has taught them that most cryptocurrencies bite the dust within two years.

Think of how many coins have been hyped and delisted since 2014 alone!

The only way to reassure them is to find other uses for steem to build a proper steem economy. For example bitwala wrote a blog-post saying that they'd added steem but no-one was using it. People need to start using it to buy stuff. It's only when these secondary players start reporting huge steem usage that the steem price will start climbing again.