For today is the day that my liquid balance is higher than my powered up balance.

As I'm sure many of us are feeling the urgency: we can't exit fast enough!
The 13 week powerdown period couldn't be any slower!

That being said...

I think the 13 week powerdown has proven itself absolutely necessary time and time again. If we were ever thinking about changing it, I think the change should be dynamic. There should be a vote that happens every month to raise or lower the number of weeks to powerdown by 1 week. Personally, I might even consider raising it, but I'm sure that wouldn't be the popular decision.

13 weeks is not a long time

Unless of course you're fighting for your life because the chain is under constant attack by a madman. Barring that scenario, I've been consistently cashing out $500 a week for the last 10 weeks. We all know that the biggest expenses come on a month to month basis. $500 a week is more than enough to pay for anything I need. A three month limit on a full cash out is not asking too much. As long as four powerdowns is enough to pay bills for that month, you're good.

Exchanges are still closed

Honestly, I find it embarrassing that there isn't an easier way to trade Steem for Hive/Bitcoin at the moment. Apparently you can do it through Huobi Global, but American IP addresses are banned. I suppose I could spoof my IP address using a VPN because they apparently don't require KYC, but that also seems risky and not really worth it.

We can use SteemEngine to do it, but that's a 1% in 1% out fee plus the slippage on bad liquidity and a poor peg to the actual market.

After doing a little research on Escrow smart contracts, it seems obvious that we already could of had a system set up to do pseudo atomic-swaps to exchange Steem for Hive and vice versa. Set up an escrow transaction sending Steem from account X to account Y. Set up an escrow transaction (or even a normal transaction) sending Hive from account Y to account X.

Anyone could be the escrow account. In effect, anyone can be their own exchange. It baffles me that @blocktrades hasn't implemented something like this, especially considering how they've been locked out of the system. By using escrow, the "exchange" is never even directly in control of the money; they can only send it to one of two accounts. Such a simple and valuable contract and no one seems to be using it. Chalk it up to everyone having way too much on their plate at the moment (and for the last 4 years). We need more devs, that much is obvious.

I hope my account doesn't get frozen!

It's a bit nerve-wracking having this much liquid Steem and having no where to put it. Two other accounts on the Steem blockchain are relying on me to make the swap as well. I hope I don't let them down.