A newbie is someone that have just 1merit and that means the user have just 0.5 sMerit so how can we spend when a minimum of 1sMerit is required for the transaction to successfully go through. We can not spend what we do not have.

There are thousands of higher ranked members who haven't even spent any of their airdropped sMerits, despite that more than a year passed since release of Merit system.