The best thing these exchanges can do for themselves is a normal 13 week power down. Yes, I'm against "bailing them out" from a political standpoint, but let's look at the practical side too.

Hardforks are not to be taken lightly. Past hardforks developed over months by the team that built the blockchain have still resulted in unforeseen bugs which created chain halts, wherein the blockchain froze to protect consensus.

Justin's management has resulted in the loss of the entire blockchain team from Steemit Inc, and his engineering team has shown little understanding or competency with Steem. They may be a fine group of techs, but they'll be rushing through a massive change that fundamentally alters the blockchain economics (do you really think there won't be glitches when stake can be moved between 3 different accounts during the 7 day payout calculation and used to triple vote the same content?) with no experience and very little chance they’ll be able to repair the chain in a timely fashion.

If Justin gets his way I have little doubt that everyone’s stake will be unintentionally frozen for an extended period of time.