I would say that bounties can affect your reputation and number of Merits that you will get. Some people before awarding user with Merit check his post history. If he will see lot of bounty reports in your post history, it's likely that he wont give Merit.
---snip---
I don't understand why bounty hunters don't just delete their old bounty report posts ---snip---
that way their post histories would look a bit cleaner, less useless reports and more discussion posts
after all, those reports are no use after the bounty project finished or the project turned scam
