I agree with you on the fact that steem is a hold for the future and get as many steem as possible right now while it's still cheap!!!
But one trick you might have missed here might be that people are taking them out in order to get more steem eventually. Sounds stupid but let me explain.
For the big guys on steemit, steem and SBD comes in regularly. But for people like us, it's not everyday that we see more that 1 sbd or steem come in to our account.
I don't know if everyone is doing this ( i can't speak for what other people do with their steem or how they think) but i have taken out some of my hard earned steem out and sold them while the price was high. Then I waited, because eventually the price had to fall and when it did, I bought back in and now I have more steem than what I started out with!!! Yes, maybe it's not too much but ending with even 10 or 15 steems higher than that we started with makes us feel good lol!!
For minnows like us this is one of the smart ways to gather more steem I think, but YES, powering down isn't something I support because that decreases the long term steem that was supposed to be on the platform and if everyone starts powering down it will be bad for the platform in the long run.