I don't think this was because of my thread. I believe that Theymos is closely monitoring the merit system and would know if there isn't enough merits. He probably was waiting for the default merits to dry up before increasing merit generation.
We will be able to connect the dots only after seeing the future changes. But I must say that it must have took a lot of time for him to plan all this. Many people are worried about loopholes being exploited (like members being able to send merits to alt account) but I think this is all intentional on his part. It would be interesting to see the future announcement he is going to make regarding this. It should happen within 1-2 months as per my expectations.