In case you missed it, We have a pending fork schedule for Tue, 6 Dec 2016 16:00:00 UTC . The, arguably, biggest change will be:

1. Power Down in 13 weeks instead of 104

The point of this post is: Is it a good or a bad thing?

Long-term wise: this is an upgrade

Steemit model is very complicated to be able to reward content creators. To work, we need, somehow, to have nearly constant flow of value between investors and creators. The reduction of the Power Down period is a blessing. This is the main reason why I actually never bought Steem. Other changes will increase Steem scarcity, which should increase the demand. So we can hopefully buckle our belt and enjoy the ride.

Short-term wise: there might be a dump storm

Hence Brace yourselves, Winter is coming. No single steemians author had the choice on holding Steem Power. It was at least 50% of your reward and now you can have it be 100% of it. My point is that a lot of people hold on to their SP because they see a long term investment while other view it as an obligation. I really don't expect whales to make such a mistake but if there were a trend, we could be in for a price crash.

I won't power up, I won't power down

I will wait and see for the impact of the fork before finally investing money in Steemit. I already put a good amount of time and I am rather happy with my achievements here.
On the other hand, I am not planning of powering down. I hope that the people who would do so won't have a big impact on the price. Well, except if Steem sky-rockets like Bitcoin or Zcash, I would definitely try to cash out some.

Anyway, we will know soon enough what will happen.

@jyezie / @cryptohazard