The market is a rough place, and the 10 cents mark is a tough thing to see. I am not powering down, and I wonder where things will go though.
As for the HF, I read a post that explained things here. It just mentions that you can't use a higher level authorization for the lower level stuff. So you can't use your master for posting now. Losing your master won't affect things if you are using your lower level stuff.