And changing the powerdown to 24 hours for what reason?

After centralizing the chain so totally and all of the dapps shutting down in protest, it would otherwise take weeks for every single user to rush to the exits as fast as possible and the price of STEEM to tank to zero. This way, the dumping can commence the day after they unilaterally change monetary/issuance policy of their centrally-managed, centrally-issued, unregistered publicly traded security.