Merit is created for anti-shitposter not for trading and how does it go now? It currently benefit for most of high rank member in bitcointalk forum.
Later on, new members, beside spend a lot of time, have to spend their own money to buy sMerit to reach a higher rank. What a failed system.
Example: if you was in bitcointalk forum a few years ago, you posted a lot of under-quality posts and you earned Legendary Rank, so it is unfair with new people joining this forum now.
Sr, Hero Member, and Legendary start planing on selling their sMerit score and their account with a ton of money.
Actually no, the merit system is specifically made for the new users, because if you haven't notice shitposter and alt farmers have a lot of accounts that are full member or lower because it takes them more time to reach the other ranks, and the system does not benefit the poeple who joind a long time agao, if you are posting under-quality posts and have reached Legendary rank, than you probably can get away with it, but in case you haven't read the ranking requirements, Sr, Members and Hero Memebers have to get a lot of merits in order to rank up.
Currently, another problem is occurred. Merit system has been questioned a lots. Group of people, they will cheat by giving their own team member, partner, friends their Merit score, even their posts are spam posts. How are bitcointalk dev gonna control that?
Good luck with your Merit score and congratulation to those who reached Sr, Hero Member, Legendary rank one more time
People selling or exchanging merits can easily be identified, thats what the merit history is for, if a memeber gets a lot of merits for a shitposts poeple can see that, if he gets merited for a good post than good for him there is no harm in it, but the point is people who are abusing the system sooner or later will get caught.