6- To have more liquidity (but not necessarily planning to sell any time soon or at all)
The changes to the system in the last hard fork were designed to make holding liquid STEEM a viable option, with the gap in return between STEEM and SP narrowed enormously. This includes powering down and then holding the STEEM. I have been doing this for several weeks in anticipation of the fork and plan to continue post-fork.
Good point I hadn't even considered that. With the reduced dilution it makes it much more viable. I'm still hoping that people sell so I can buy more up at a low price but to be honest either way is fine. I have a decent amount of SP so if there is no significant fall I still gain.
but I am trying to learn. Can you explain how powering down and holding STEEM helps to narrow the gap between STEEM and SP?@smooth - I've read that holding liquid steem loses value and conversely does not gain interest. I honestly do not have the head for numbers or market caps or things of such nature,
The "interest" on SP is now very small, probably something like 1-2%/y (exact rate depends how much is powered up). That plus voting and curation rewards are the only differences between STEEM and SP.
Things were very different before the fork when SP earned "interest" of something like 150%/year. Holding STEEM rather than SP under those conditions was a huge disadvantage. It no longer is.
If you plan to just hold for a long term then it still certainly makes sense to hold SP given those advantages even though they are smaller (and I'm not rapidly powering down much of my SP, only a small portion of it) but the disadvantage is that it is locked up, can't be used for trading, and takes 1-13 weeks to access 7%-100% of it.