Hi there,
There are a lot of complains about the new merit and rank rules. I fully support these changes and i am sure this will have a postive effect on the quality of the forum.

For the ones complaining there i a simple solution (next to deliver quality posts to get your so desired merit); just buy a copper membership.

It's very easy to do:
Go to https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=credit;promote
You will see a short page with instructions.
You need to send 0.0020833btc to a bitcoin address.
After you have done this and the transaction has 1 confirmation you can refresh the page.
Select Copper Membership from the dropdown menu on the new page and you are done!

This will cost you a small amount of BTC and a couple of minutes. In return you will get:
Some of the same permissions as Member-rank members, such as reduced signature styling restrictions. (But none of the PM-related restrictions are currently lifted, such as the style limit or per-hour PM limit.)
Your "you must wait ____ seconds between ___" counter is reduced by 75%. So if you're naturally of Newbie rank, you only have to wait 360-75% = 90 seconds.
Under your name in the forum it will say  you have a copper membership.