OP might want to check out this thread I made last year. It fits this discussion nicely.
Here Is One Reason Why Legendary Members Get So Many Merits. As a merit source, I distribute my source merits as I read the threads that interest me. I would love if there were more users from lower ranks that participate in the discussions, but it's not my fault they aren't. If there are no newbies to merit, I am not going to merit newbies. Open any serious thread and it's not uncommon to see 10 posts and 7/8 are from legendary members, 1 is a hero, etc. Join the discussions to reap the benefits and create something of value. Then you will get merited. I even ran a merit giveaway thread for a long time and got very few responses there. Eventually, it died. Quality newbies will reach higher ranks easily, those who stay newbies do so for a reason.
What’s happening now was, You can’t get a enough merit if your field of expertise is not about Bitcoin technicalities or in Meta which most of the merits distributes.
To be fair, this is a Bitcoin forum as the name suggests. And on a Bitcoin forum, you discuss Bitcoin. Everything else is of less importance and that includes the altcoin section. That doesn't mean that there are no quality posts there as well, but the majority don't care much about them. I am not going to merit you for your ability to fix cars because that's off topic to me. The topic of discussion is in the name of the forum.