Steemit is so cleverly created to encourage users to hold a lot of their steem powered up - therefore minimising the possibility that lots of steem will be sold at one time, flooding the market and crashing the price of Steem. But as a result when the markets are volatile (which they often are), you kind of have to keep powering down in order to get some ability to diversify investments - or to trade.
Its quick and easy to power up but much slower to power down - so it makes sense to spend more time in power down mode than not! That's the way I see it ;-)) I don't think it means people are shifting out of Steem necessarily.
Concept is treated very nicely in Neptune's Brood.
Distinction is made between slow money, medium money and fast money.
The power up and power down mode in Steemit is an early form of a distinction between fast money and slow money.
STEEM On !!
DaveB
Update on this comment - I have just found out that power down is no longer over a two year period - it is now 13 weeks - you may have already known this? Anyway it's new to me even though it was instigated 8 months ago - see the following post for info on the new power down period and also the reduction of 90% inflation to 10% inflation and the percentage that Steem power gets https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitblog/final-review-of-steem-economic-changes
Have a beautiful day! ;-)
Thanks for follow-up I was aware power down is 13 weeks. You get this warning when you power up.
I think they were having trouble getting most people to want to power up, when you had to commit those funds in a lock-up for a couple of years