Are @ned and @steemit bailing?

Well, this is a sign of confidence in Steem. Steemit seven days ago started powering down its account, with the intent to withdraw sizeable amounts of Steem to sell on exchanges.

The first move was powering down 1,967,199.185 STEEM which at the current price in US dollars is $489,846 (basically half a million dollars). Then yesterday the @steemit account moves 265045.390313808 STEEM to the Bittrex exchange, which currently amounts to $265,045.390 US Dollars, after which the power down is stopped.

But, things get even crazier with another power down starting of 34,005,880.543 STEEM which equates to $8,469,470.602 US Dollars That is not a typo, I made sure I converted the value three times over, that's almost $8.5 million US Dollars.

The exchange transfers and powering down aside, we also see a transfer to gsr.io from 9 days ago for almost $200,000 US Dollars, specifically $199,335.2. The note on the transfer gives nothing away, except, "Programmatic sales with GSR.io" - visiting the GSR site here implies they provide liquidity and execution strategies for cryptocurrencies and digital assets.

As you keep digging beyond the @steemit account you see @ned himself 7 days ago transferred 1543650.408 STEEM to Bittrex valued at $384,636.003 US Dollars, which was followed by a 1 STEEM transaction with the note, "Moving / hiding all my cryptocurrency." - why does @ned feel the need to move and hide all of his cryptocurrency? Who is he hiding it from?

Now, let's dig a bit more. Another Steemit owned account is called @steemit2 which yesterday transferred 166546.672 STEEM to Bittrex which equates to only a smallish amount of $41,507.761 USD.

What is going on?

Herein lies the problem. Steemit is a privately owned and run company, so it can do whatever it likes. However, these latest moves of seriously large amounts of STEEM are concerning for investors and members of the community.

I have seen some theories, some people are saying its protecting STINC's assets after some people in the community threatened a hard fork which would affect STINC's funds (which would effectively kill the project).

If security is the issue, why move such large amounts of STEEM to exchanges which can be hacked? Bittrex, in particular, has been hacked before, it seems like a liability to have all of your eggs and funds in one basket.

I don't want to spread FUD

I love Steem, I believe in it enough I invested some of my own money into it and that is why I am concerned. For all we know, these transfers are related to SMT's and a good thing or related to other unknown reasons like the aforementioned rumours.

Large transfers without a peep from Steemit, it looks like someone is emptying the safe and preparing to make a run for it. Without any official word, we have nothing else to go on whatsoever and speculation is bad for everyone.

What is going on? We need answers. This is poor timing considering Bitcoin and other cryptos are falling off an edge right now, combined with this the price will just further plummet once more hurting investors.

Powering down takes 13 weeks, we still have time to reverse this.