After the new monthly merit source's refill, we had an 11% spike while 1 month ago we had a 170% spike, this means a lot of those 9600+ (maybe 3k+) merits were awarded from abusers/sellers !?!
That was to be expected. If you randomly check some of the Jr. Members that were ranked down to Newbie by the new rule, and received Merit again in the first week, you'll find that many posts aren't worth it. I've seen a few high-ranking accounts (usually with red trust already) who sent 1 Merit to 50 or more Newbies to give their army of spammers a signature again.
In the long run, these numbers shouldn't matter much. Merit turned an unlimited problem into a manageable problem.