What I understand is the whole ecosystem rests on one token (Steem). If the Steem token and Steem Power have low demand then there is no fuel for growth of the reward pool or anything else. You can build in scalability to welcome a billion users and that is fine. I agree with HF20 and that mission but at the same time what happened to the promises of gamification? What about generating revenue? What about producing an actual demand for the Steem token right now? Not in 2019-2020.
Communities would be great but they haven't given a release date on that. My point is Steem tokens and Steem Power are a bad long term hold. If that is the case everyone will earn and sell immediately while powering down rather than powering up. Look at the stats to see which accounts are powering down right now. As a result the downward pressure on the price of Steem creates a rush for the exits and over time Steem price in BTC terms always trends down.
This isn't ideal.
Anyone powering down and selling in a bearmarket is not smart in my opinion. Unless you bought your Steem for a few cents you will always lose this way.
To me it is irrelevant who is powering down and selling. We need fresh money form NEW investors (a lot of it). The big whales are kinda irrelevant as they will not grow the value of STEEM more. They are already fully or kinda fully invested.