Must be getting serious now!... Just went to vote on Mintpal and had this message pop up:
Error!
You must have a larger trade history in order to vote.
Up until now I was voting with just one trade done.
I think mintpal is cracking down. They got greedy when they doubled the cost of voting couple weeks ago. Top spot was a range of 5-10k USD. Not necessary to be that expensive. So people empowered community to vote and they made less money. So instead of making money off votes they make money off of trade fees to vote.