Quote from: Lucius on February 03, 2020, 02:50:13 PM

Very likely this is about XinXan is sending merits to his alt accounts, or he is selling merits. I read somewhere that the average price of 1 merit on black market is around $5 or more, so it doesn't surprise me that there are such suspicious transactions.

I think there is very little that can be done, everyone is almost completely free to give his merits to any post, no matter what the post is about. I think this kind of thing primarily discourages some users who have a very good post/s but no one rewards them with even 1 merit.

Everyone's free to give his merits to any post, but abusing it and traffic of merit is a different thing.

If someone's discouraged by the fact that a member's earned merit for a subjectively undeserved post and gives BitcoinTalk up for that reason, then their purpose being a member here is pretty clear. You don't write for the merit, you do it for the forum and because you just want to share an idea and some effort with someone else.

To me it looks like TEAM360 is an account trying to be boosted by XinXan, hence might be his own. Unless we've proof, that'll remain just a mystery though.
What looks pretty shady is that he's clearly offering services ("From 29th Jan to 31 Jan(The Year of 2020) I will provide free promotional service."), but two posts below he says "I don't offer any service here". This thread, which is his too, clearly offers services too.

The sketchy part comes with XinXan's activity. No posts since 12th of June 2019, yet he gave merit ('coincidentally') in the past month. Things get even sketchier when you put TEAM360's thread next to an ANN thread created by coinliker, a member XinXan has given merit to on the 7th of January. Both threads are using the general structure. Even the first paragraph is centered and bolded in both threads. I doubt TEAM360 was so inspired by coinliker's thread that he decided to go for the same thread structure.

The thing I cannot link though is the level of English these users are using. While TEAM360 is using a lower level of English ("but not reached much people", "Don't run add for your project" etc), the other mebers have a noticeably higher level of English. It could all be about intentionally using a lower level of English to lower the chances of the users being linked together.