This is what I found on https://wallet.hive.blog/faq.html#what_is_powering_up_and_down

What is powering up and down? Powering up - If you have HIVE tokens, you can Power Up to Hive Power to get more voting influence on posts and comments. Having more Hive Power also increases the amount of curation rewards and new vested tokens that you can earn. More HP also grants more influence on approving Hive witnesses.

Powering down - If you have Hive Power, you can power down to turn it into liquid HIVE over a period of time. The system will transfer 1/13 of your Hive Power to HIVE each week for about three months (13 weeks), starting 1 week from the time it is started. However, you will lose your influence in the network proportionally to how much is powered down, so think about it carefully. Power downs can be stopped at any time.

5 weeks power down will certainly allow people to release the staked HIVE faster and It's also encourage more people to power up. Specially new investors.

Hope this helps

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