Well!! Merits can be traded in exchange for USD
That's very bad... I don't know why people insist on buying it, when they could easily earn it with a decent post.PS: Good finding OP. I would encourage you to find the buyers and sellers too with evidences if possible. DTs will take care of them. It's obvious that there will be merit abusing however as a community if we are active to find those losers then we can at-least bring some justice for those who are earning legitimate merit.
I think anyone caught doing this should be immediately banned to ever posting here. They are essentially stealing money from the forum, since you can buy a Copper Membership to be able to keep signatures, as theymos said it here:[...]
- 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.)
[...]
- 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.)
[...]
People are paying more for merit than a Copper Membership costs? That seems a bit insane to me.
Well... Not really, it actually costs almost the same. To be a copper member you need to pay 0.00208333 BTC aka $13.93 
More info here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=credit;promote
Maybe this is where the price for 1 merit came from, same as the price of a copper membership