I had a great conversation with @nicholaslive regarding this very thing. I must confess, when he first mentioned it I had my doubts, after all it's hard to see why we would benefit from it, but the more I thought about it, the more an actual product/service was beginning to form in my head.

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The Risk of Powering up

In order to present more or less why I think this actually might work, give me two minutes to talk about some market psychology. Now, I will preface this by saying I'm not an authority on this, but I've read enough to have an opinion at least, for whatever that is worth. That being said, there are plenty of conversations regarding this matter that I've participated on to know that there are enough people of this mindset.

How many people are holding to liquid STEEM not because they would not like to power up and enjoy the benefits, but because if they do and something was to happen, something unexpected, accessing those funds would take weeks and thus potentially hurt them.

I think it's important to point out that if the fear is rational or not is not really something I'm trying to debate. Some cogent reasons can be crafted for both sides of the argument, but what I'm really interested in, at least for this particular idea, is to talk about the group of people who hold this belief.

I speculate that if there was a way for them to access the funds, even with a penalty if the emergency was to happen, they would probably power up and be more comfortable with the idea of long term, simply because there is a choice.

A possible solution: Transferring Vested Power

If you are tilting your head sideways right now I apologize, but please give me two minutes to explain the idea in detail. Today on the STEEM blockchain we can do many functions that most people are not even aware of already. We can: escrow, vest onto another account, withdraw to third account, and autopower up one also. These functions are not commonly used simply because most users, not all obviously, operate one account and thus don't require such tooling.

It's precisely because some of these functions exist that I speculate that adding the function of transferring vested STEEM would not be that difficult to implement, but of course it would require a fork, yes, the one thing everyone is still emotionally recovering from.

Painting the Picture - Accessing Liquidity

For the sake of argument let's say I had a small emergency and I needed to sell some of my holdings. I could no doubt start a powerdown, and wait seven days for the first payout, but what I need to pay cannot wait seven days. Outside of asking a friend, I'm pretty much dead in the water, would you not say so?

Well, what if I could sell my STEEMPOWER to @blocktrades for example, and in return receive liquid funds back. I could receive them in STEEM of course, or any other token for that matter. The idea however would work only if there was profit to be made by the exchange or user who would be buying the vested STEEM and thus forfeiting the cost opportunity.

To make my example a little more palpable and simple, imagine I would sell 100 STEEM POWER to @blocktrades and he in return would send me 90 STEEM tokens. The profit for @blocktrades would be 10 STEEM tokens, and I would resolve my need to access my holdings with urgency.

Trust Issues

I realize to some people this whole exchanging of STEEM for Vested STEEM might sound like I'm advocating for opening the cryptopian pandora's box, but this is not the case at all. In the case of a service like @blocktrades it might not be necessary, but if a market was to built for hosting said idea, then possibly for the first time ever, we would be implementing the escrow functions this blockchain already has.

This way people who don't complete their end of the bargain would not be able to take advantage of the situation. Also the market, if one was to be created would work as a pseudo-futures market, and all details pertaining the transactions would be clearly defined.

What about people dumping?

I ran this idea by a few people I deeply respect intellectually and so far I've been hearing a divided opinion on the matter. I happen to believe that if someone is simply holding to their STEEM because the 13 weeks of waiting is keeping them here, then they were on the way out anyways.

This without even mentioning that the cost for accessing liquid funds would probably be steep. This is to say that if I wanted to dump 100K right now, granted there are enough sellers to even reach that number, I would end up paying for it 20k if not more. Why? Because you are accessing a premium pool of liquidity and it's understandable that the convenience fee would be high. So I for one, do not fear such thing happening.

Steemit Inc would not be interested anyways

To preemptively remove this part of the conversation from the comments. Yes, that's possible, but maybe that is something they've not considered to begin with, and if there is enough of us who like the idea and embrace it, then why wouldn't they at least consider it?

I remember @heimindanger mentioning in a group setting how he finds that the inaccessibility to our liquid funds is one of the reasons why we are not so investment friendly, and as much as I did have some retort at the time, when @sorin.cristescu brilliantly explained the need for vested STEEM, I went back to my hotel with this taking up a lot of space in my brain.

Would love to hear some Feedback

Do you think this is something that would benefit the blockchain, or the opposite. I'm obviously completely fine with disagreements as one of the things I strive to do is not to live inside my own bubble, so let me have it.