My dear steemians, I have been away for a couple of weeks after a well-deserved vacation and a break from my normal day to day life. Nevertheless I have been reading steemit on the go and I wanted to share my comments on the recent changes that will be implemented after next week’s hard fork. Mimicking @steemitblog I will summarize my thoughts as follow:

## Changes:

* **Power Down in 13 weeks instead of 104:** It just means people who want out will no longer have to wait 2 years to do so, price will probably go low for a maximum of 13 weeks then it will recover. There is going to be a lot of room to pick up cheap coins, my expected low is $0.05 per Steem. 

* **Inflate at 9.5% APR narrowing to 0.95% APR by 0.01% every 250,000 blocks (Roughly 0.5% per year):** For me, the effect of the inflation rate was always psychological since most of it was locked up in Steem Power, now we will have much less inflation but a lot more liquid steem. In crypto people prefer less inflation, even if this inflation is locked up, so in the long run I think it will help bring new investors and stabilize the price (people will no longer panic sell because of inflation). 

* **Steem Dollar conversion takes 3.5 days (down from 7):** This reduces the risk of losing money when converting to steem which will strengthen the peg. 

* **Witnesses receive 10% of inflation, runner up witnesses get paid 5 times the top 19 per block produced:** As a back-up witness I think this is fair, with current prices and distribution most back-up witnesses are running their nodes at a lost, it will also incentive more people to run a full node and become witnesses which is always a good thing.

* **Miners get paid the same as the top 19 per block produced:** Again, more miners means more people who will take a closer look into steem and this is a good thing.

* **Witnesses / Miners will continue to be paid in Steem Power:** Considering that power down takes 13 weeks I think this is a good middle point, it will slow down the immediate dumps from witnesses, but it will pay them enough to cover their expenses. However I personally believe that most witnesses shouldn’t be constantly powering down, but then again voters will decide whether to support them or not if they do. 

* **75% of inflation goes to authors and curators:** Wasn´t this how it was always meant to be?

* **15% of inflation is allocated to Steem Power:** The value of steem power as an instrument of influence in the platform should not be diminished so I am glad that some of the inflation is still allocated as steem power. 

* **Switch to Equihash Proof of Work algorithm:** Considering 2 miners have been dominating the mining que for months now this was a “must-have” change, if anything we waited too long for this one. 

Looking forward to hear your comments and to see how all of the changes play out.

I leave you with a great picture from one of the places I visited on my holidays:

![](https://s17.postimg.org/l8vyq4w8v/15025144_10154784204782642_2372600065870663236_o.jpg)
Palm farms at  Ait Boujan Tinghir - Morocco