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Hello guys, today i saw a russian telelegram grup about merit. He sell merit on 20$ for eatch.  Look on the screenchoot: https://wmpics.pics/di-EKV9.jpg    Some peoples buy merits and its very bad. Don't say about what they will be deceived. Also notice on the Russian thread many suggestion from Newbies: How buy merit or price on merit.  In this thead man official sell merit:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3301296.0

Merit become a new coin on this forum and it the biggest problem. To my opinion moderator must be a ban all, who create a similar topic.  Thanks for reading and what you do about it? How to struggle with this problem?

The best solutuon is to track down the buyers and the sellers, and delete their accounts. Once a load of them have lost money, then the market will die.

The other question is - why is rhat thread still on the board? Did you report it?

Selling merit isn't against the rules, but could get you red trust. Theymos said not to worry about merit trading too much, in the long run they won't have any sMerit left. Let them spend $100 on 5 Merit, that's not doing them any good, they're just wasting their money.

I just reported the post with the reference of English translation (https://prnt.sc/j9315c).

Is there any such clear statement available? Can you please quote it?

Theymos said not to worry from the point of running out sMerits not from the point of open buying/selling IMO.

Yes, but I don't want to support it, and that's why I want a list of people who shouldn't receive merit regardless of their post quality.

I know Merit sources aren't allowed to sell Merit, but other users don't have any restrictions. Disclaimer: I'm not buying (Lol) nor selling Merit.

I guess I'll have to dig into theymos' post history:

It's the lack of a statement to the contrary. Nothing has been added to the forum rules. IIRC the Merit sources see a warning on their merit page telling them that they are not allowed to trade it. The fact that the rest of us don't get any warning means there is no firm rule.

Selling merit isn't against the rules  (http://Selling merit isn't against the rules) and ...there is no firm rule (http://archive.is/gG2aH#selection-3597.198-3597.277) are totally different like there is a difference in saying, I am poor and I am broke. One is accepting without further question and another one is adopting but working for the better outcome.

The amount of fools and confused (I would say tricky merit abusers)people we see around, they will easily use your statement as a bait to create a ground for them to debate.

- I guess theymos never thought of the aggressiveness we see for selling/exchanging merits from the abusers.

Thank you for the digging for me @LoyceV

This really shit and against the forum. With the merits alone they cannot get placed in campaign or elsewhere, for them it only help to rank up. With the post quality increasing rank with the merit means none of the manager will not loosely take it.
I am damn sure merit buyers will be under red tagged. I see some one applied yahoo's own campaign and manager highlighted he is abusing the merits. That will be only happen mate so no worries.
Once trust has been traded and now merits. This is really shit understanding by the forumers.

thats why me gets no merits till now even after good suggestive and usefull posts

No you got no merits as your English is atrocious, I don't even need to look at more of your posts.

Unfortunately whenever there is something that is in high demand but limited supply, people will try anything to get an edge, including buying merit.

The risk of trading merit outweighs the benefits. For instance, you have a full member account and want to get to Sr. fast, you buy merit. This is an account you'll be having for a long time, possibly for years. You can forget about that little trade, move on, get some real merit, get some decent posts, activity, possibly some trust, and then somebody finds out about your merit trade and the account is ruined. Taking a shortcut may look like a good idea, but it's best to level up on your own.

If you are sure you are doing nice post and helping the forum, continue it. Soon you will be noticed but from your few lines, I suggest you put more effort.


That is the reason that members who have smerit don't search for posts befitting for the merit. They wait for ways to trade it or let it locked in their account.

No, you're getting no merits because your grasp of English is so bad that you even screwed up your username.

I can't believe how utterly moronic these people are, that they really think that because they "workhard" that they're somehow entitled to get merits, and that they see nothing wrong with garbage shitposts like


I can't even understand the first fucking 6 words of that post, so there's no way I would even continue reading it, much less actually award merits for it.  This guy is probably a 12 year old Filipino kid, picking his nose and wheedling his mother for pocket change.  Even worse, it's probably family who introduced him to bitcointalk.

Stricter punishments on merit abusers (who exchange their sMerits, in fact, not merits) will solve the problem. However, as Loyce said in previous threads, this behaviour doesn't violate the current rules of the forum. It will only result in red tags.
I think it's better of merit abusements will be added into the forum rules to officially fight against those abusers.

Think of the direction the forum was taking before the introduction of merit. Compared to that selling/exchanging merits is a temporary problem which will soon fade into insignificance. The most blatant abusers of course will be caught and tagged.

Theymos doesnt have any power here,DT members are the ones who are powerful in this forum.The owner doesnt know what is happening to this forum,red trust abusers which doesnt have any good reason why do people getting those shit redtrust,its morelikely a joke right now because of the shit DT abusers who does want to get noticed by the public.

The best part to all of this merit issues arising now, would have been not giving any member any merit at the first place. Maybe each member gets a given amount of merit for achieving a given status. Then once the laid out status is achieved, the system automatically gives merits to the user and this users can't be transferred as well between users as it's only the system that can do that.

Merit trading seems severe right now as the circulation of merit is so small, But think how it will look in 12 months. The initial sMerit will of all deteriorated and only the new sMerit every month will be in circulation, DT's need to keep tagging the most blatant cases and the Sources then need to ignore those members, then the problem will be solved..

Have you tried reporting this to the admins? I hope so. I hope these users who sell their merits will be banned in the group.

Merits should be earned not bought. There are many members who try their best to be noticed but there are others who buy their way around, so pathetic. Are they not even ashamed of what they do?

Then people would cheat it somehow to get that status and boom, they will get merits. Your suggestion is not compatible to restrict some alt-account to rank up, and it would be just the same as activity point.

They know that even a single smerit they did not have even they post a good quality post because they holding many alt accounts.
That's the reason risking their account by buying or trading smerit just to rank up they make underground the new rule here in the forum which is strictly prohibited.
Maybe there are many reports, just always follow up this report it was clearly stated and have strong evidence to have a red tag.

Dont be an idiot! DT members have their own rules, they have their own standards and set of rules.
Theres no such thing as merit abusers based on the owner of this forum but hes a pussy that is why some of these DT members are being allowed to put red trust to those who has intended to exchange merits.

These selfish retarded people dont want any members to rank up and if they want you to get kicked out from this forum they can easily tag your ass some redtrust,because of shitposting,merit abuse that shouldnt exist,or multiple account abusers,all type of abusers except themselves are all shitposters.

The new sMerit being generated by Merit sources will be the only ones existing in the coming months ones all other non-merit sources has exhausted all of their sMerits to giveaway. But even if that happens half of those sMerits received will be sendable to other members, so as half of those again and again. As long as we are active giving merits to quality post and not hoarding it for ourselves it will be sufficient to the forum, the admins are also actively adding more merit sources to the forum.

As for the people making merits as a business, I don't think that tagging them is necessary because it is a harsh penalty for them. If this is possible I am thinking of permanently putting them on a block list in the merit system so they they are not able to send or receive any merits as a form of punishment. They could also be suspended for their actions if the admins think of this as a necessary solution.

Who do you think put people in DT1? Theymos has all the power, but doesn't abuse it. That's why theymos also added people to DT2, and even excluded people from DT2. After that, it's up to the other DT1 members to include or exclude people. In a way, it's a democratic vote from DT1 members to create DT2 members.
Some DT1 members disagree with theymos on including certain members. Isn't that great?

That's the beauty of the system: it's self-regulating. And sometimes, someone is removed from DT2 after the community disagrees with the red trust he left.
I'm still considering how to use my DT2 powers, so far I've been very conservative.

I believe theymos chooses freedom of speech and expression over strict control. That's why you're allowed to call him this.

I'm curious which account of yours received red trust.
I don't think any DT member has a problem with people ranking up. I for one like it when new users earn merit by posting quality.

Vod did it - we all know he is our Deity.

Yep, those 5 merits will not help them in any other way unless they will rank up to the next rank but seeing people buying merits, it is pretty clear that they are doing desperate things. If they can't earn a single merit on their own then those merits they are buying will just go to waste. I can't wait for the day that those people who are using the merit system the wrong way, run out of sMerit, let's see how the forum will look like till then.

That was my understanding, I was reading some disapprove of giving merit to ANN threads.   But if someone puts alot of effort into coding something valid and real and yet that is a new account and seemingly a newbie I'm probably going to give them some merit so long as Ive read through some of the work done.  Anyone does some genuine advancement in crypto even if you dont appreciate that direction probably deserves some recognition.   Some disagree with that and prefer just to favour purely Bitcoin, thats fine but the difference would be opinion or freedom of speech and expression.  Thats the correct system for a forum because people will always disagree on various points.

People who've created false merit like OP mentions are going to betray themselves most likely.

Why selling merits is against the rule and selling accounts isn't? Both are giving the unfair opportunity to rank up if the person has a money.
I see a guy selling accounts from Member to Sr.Member on Russian board, advertising this business on his sig.

Yeah, DTs painted him red, but I guess he simply doesn't care, it won't hurt his trade anyhow. But if admins would ban people like him and all of his alts, then we'll see some changes here.

Last time i checked, shitposting is not the main reason for tagging people anymore, some DT members already stated that. For abusing, i can only comment about multiple account abusers. It would create a lot of spam, and it is not good for the forum so it must be taken down, especially if they break the campaign/signature rules which stated that multiple account in the same campaign will be kicked (might get you tagged because some of managers are DT member), and i think it is a fair thing because cheater with multiple account is not only breaking rules, but blocking people chance to get into bounty/signature (if we want to look from money side of this forum)


Theymos stated that merit trading, merit abusing, are not a problem, so both is accepted, but it is kinda shady so both might get tagged.

The current status quo seems OK. If you have to pay $20 per merit plus a risk of getting red trust, then that's a situation that doesn't concern me at all. I'm not going to lose sleep over people going to ridiculous lengths to buy merit, since only a small number of people will be willing and able to do that.

As long as merit sales are a black market, I'm happy, since that makes it far more difficult and expensive to buy merit. If that's the case, then the small volume of black-market merit trades don't themselves bother me much, and I think that it does more harm than good to get too witch-hunty about it.

Yes small number of merit sellers and buyers won't effect the overall system. The percentage is very small reporting and having negative trust should be enough lesson for them.

Now selling and buying accounts can't be controlled... and that is ok.. if someone sold his/her account better let him go away he was not worthy.  and may be the new comer will use it in better way :)

Bounties is the section for them, they will live and die in this section we should not be worried.

How do you know that's a genuine sale? Whilst it's inevitable that many people are going to try buy/sell merit (or trade it), there will probably be more opportunistic scammers popping up than actual merit salesmen just like there is with the account farmers. Send money to them and more often than not they'll probably just take your money without actually sending you anything. Genuine merit sellers are more likely to get busted pretty easy as well. All you have to do is buy merit from them and they expose their source account. It would probably just be much easier to buy an account in the first place.

That is too bad, merit is a sign or a praise that some one has post a quality post that is helpful to the forum, so if people start to sell merit then there will be no respect for it. please moderator should do something about it.

Thanks for your answers. Today i seen two thread with sell accounts :

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3044231.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2736633.0

Its bad , forum  shouldn't became in market.

Look at the problem you have created from resolving the previous problems.Statistics of spam has lessen but those account farmers wpnt stop farming ,even your DT members cant be controlled,abusing the red trust which you have created for scammers,now it is being used for non sense.If you do want spam to stop take out the root of all the problems which is the signatures.Or lock some discussion board for signatures,so that the spams will be in a single discussion make it "Shitposter Discussion" and tell those bounty managers to require hunters to post in that discussoin.

Merits sucks you know that ? so biased to the high rank members,you know it yourself it is too much for the new members,those who are here for about a year are in good position,sr. member? and how is that fair to those newbies in this forum? the max that they can get would be member rank.

Dont tell us all of your merit sources are going to give some merits to those people,the trust system has been abused,you know that,thepharmacist ,lauda and other shit people here who are using that ability to tag people,causing another problem because those people who got reds are going to create more accounts to cover those accounts that has reds.

Its all about you,come to think twice, if there will be no signatures there will be no spams,its purely discussions.
If you dont want to remove the signatures,make another discussion board for the signature participants require all the hunters to do shitosts on that discussion = problem solved.

Again another topic about merit. You are right there is no rules in selling merit and creating a giveaway merit thread. In selling merit you earn money but it may result in negative trust or red trust. Selling merits may be an abuse in merit system as they receive merit but the buyer still post low quality post that will result in spamming. If i ask you a question, if you are a moderator do you want to delete so many low quality post that will result in spamming? not just low quality but also out of topic. For me selling merit is not a good move for your own account. I'd prefer Giveaway Merit Thread as your sMerit will be put in good use and also help other member try their best to post a good quality post, we all know that the one who created the giveaway thread will choose good quality post and reward him/her.

Stfu, you are a perfect example of a cancer,what are you a 3rd grade ?you will be permanently a jr.member if you ask me because your grammar needs a lot of improvements not unless the great theymos will remove the shitty biased merit system for the higher ranks.Or he can remove the signatures permanently because it is the source of spam in this forum.

I think that I can understand why some users are able to sell their merit ... And some that buy..
i explain, I already saw many Jr Member having posted close to 200 posts and having no merit like me... in this way it becomes impossible to grow up to Member because you need at last 10 Merits to become Member ...
and i also think that users having sMerits are sometimes really Scrooge..  ;D

i really think that obtain Merit with time could be a new option ... example 2Merits a month could become a way to obtain some...

As i don’t speak correctly English, I think that I will stay Jr Member for a long time.

This statement is consistent with the Forum's stance that they don't ban the promotion of fraudulent or questionable activity. The proper course of action is to post a scam accusation thread in the Reputation or Scam Accusation board.

You could also post negative trust for anyone selling or buying merit in such public fashion it can't be questioned. But this approach reeks of witch hunting.

Try to innovate your post and help others in the forum, you will recieve your merit base on that. Waiting is not an option and open your doors for opportunity.

It's all about you more like. Why do you care about merit and ranks unless you're only here to earn as much as possible from signature campaigns? People can post here freely regardless of their rank and merit but those who actually want to contribute something worthwhile will get the merit pretty quickly. Most people just don't seem willing to contribute anything of value other than the standard generic one liners they can churn out as fast as possible in spam megathreads and those are exactly the sort of people the merit system is meant to restrict.

I dont care about the ranks,merits and etc, i do care about the spam that these signatures has caused.Most of the DT members here are doing their shit things with the lower ranks and people who doesnt have the ability to write english,the inability to do that causing those people to get unmerciful red trusts.I know someone who has been here for 5years ,a good english speaker who does receive red trust for arguing to these godly DT members.

How is that fair ?That is purely bullshit,the pharmacist specifically is giving away red trust to those people who got him irrate,who moderate these people? and who moderate those people who put this idiot DT members?

You know that signatures wont be removed because they generate a huge amount of traffic to the forum? Stop being toxic for no reason whatsoever.

Specific cases have specific evidence to be proven. If there is evidence that the person is guilty of doing something illegal or against the rules or account sales then they will be negged. This has nothing to do with arguing with any DT member. Thats your imagination. Also why are you even interested in someone else's account so much? No wonder its your alt account itself.

Possibly The Pharmacist gets 100+ PMs per day. He is a human after all and thus its possible he has disabled PMs. But he would not give trust for no reason. Stop making up BS stories.

People just care with merit. Whereas the real purpose of this forum is to share knowledge about Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency. I don't think this forum will be like this. Just care about Bounty and Merit.

OK, now I had my 5 minutes of true laughing :D The guy performing the Dance of Merit while being even unable not to screw up his username - that's hilarious. Not to speak of his cryptic expressionistic statement quoted below. LoL. But this leads me to a big question: if he makes us laugh so much, even though unintentionally, isn't he in the end paradoxically worth a little bit of Merit?

Are you kidding me 500$ for legendary account??
Really shame on you who ever was the the owner this account.. this is the price you giving to your TIME you spent on this account??

Edit: Oops my bad... there is good chance that account might be the hacked one.

There is also a greater chance the seller doesn't even have the account and somebody will get scammed.

Anatomy of an BitcoinTalk.org account purchase SCAM. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3174991.0)

That's equally likely in any Merit trade as well.

The forum was not like this a few years back when there were people who used to talk about differenet crypto and their trading methods and how they are facing problems or coping up with them. With the number of shittoken bounties coming up every other child born in the bottomfeeder vomitposter world countries is learning to "hunt" these bounties and not try to earn a living by conventional means. Merit stopped them like a huge stone wall which is why people are whining about it now..

Stealing an account and selling it is one possibility, and it's one reason why it's probably not worth buying them. It will probably be detected before you can get your money back.

Selling a genuine account might be worth it if you are giving up on Bitcoin Talk. I think we are at the start of a new period of growth, so now is not the time to quit.

Be careful, it could be a hacked account, preferably using escrow services to transact, but the price is for a legendary account, is quite cheap.

members like us have to report them in forum so that moderators can see what are they doing and take further action for the good of this forum.
I dont know there is any section/thread for report merit sellers/buyers. If there is any please kindly drop the link anyone.

selling a legendary account for 500$ is no way possible the owner is not that crazy to do so.
It surely a stolen account,and if it is a stolen one then it will be detected and be banned by the moderators.

This might be a stupid question, but really what's the point of merit? To show that one is a good poster? Are signature campaign really affected by this?

You are not alone asking this questions (https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/3v0b76/a_senior_citizen_called_her_husband_during_his/) so don't worry not a stupid question, here is a quote from thyemos, bitcointalk's owner and administrator. He is hoping to achieve two simple tasks out this merit crap.


So is it too much to ask for a quality?

Thank you for the response. And no it's not too much to ask for quality, the problem that I'm seeing is that the merit system is not enough because most people do not care to give merit for quality posts. It basically just leaves it for a lot of abusers.

thanks) laughed from souls

I'm so tired of reading this type of comment. I dropped my standards from 'quality' to 'good', and I still have trouble finding posts that I like, and when I do, it's often a legendary.

Most posts suffer from foot and mouth disease. Don't engage brain, open mouth, and put your foot in it.

Would be interesting to see how much tolerance is allowed for merit use ?

Repeated merit abuse should result in permanent ban in my opinion. Some people are not concerned about negative trust on their account simply because they are not using the account for signature campaign. Also, there are members buying accounts with negative trust here as well.

The problem of selling merits is very acute. At the forum this is not so noticeable, but in Telegram, just tons of groups offering such services. Of course the merit system is still far from perfect, but in the end it will benefit the forum and the community.

I hope to see list of those groups, which will help me out abusement hunters join and scan around to find abusers, which in turn will contribute to clean up our forum.
Of course, there are side effects that more account farmers will fall into merit trading. Nevertheless, due to merit system tracking specifications and lots of radars in the forum, they will be catched someday.

There are probably lots of people offering bitcointalk accounts and feedback too outside of the forum. As I said before, many of them will likely just be scammers taking chances but any sort of restrictions that you put in place that can be earned y doing something is going to be gamed/exploited. The only way I can think to stop it completely is to remove signatures completely and charge people a substantial fee for them. At least nobody can farm accounts in any capacity then. I think the merit system should stay though.

Nowadays many people are using their merit as a business, but merit isn't business Bitcointalk start this system for others who help  everyone who have a general knowledge, so I hope Bitcointalk can find who sends his merit for business,

I'm not against it either since it's there merit, they have the right to do as they want with it,  its their account tnot ours,  its their decission to make.

when live throws lemons at you, make lemonade  ;D

list bitcointalk merit on coinmarketcap as digital asset  ;D

it is making money on people's problem. Very sad. There is no doubt that such merit selling threads exist in every local board. With all this stuff around merit moderators should be have really al lot of work all those months that the system exists. No doubt that each case should be tracked and punished.

You are right there is no rules in selling merit and creating a giveaway merit thread. It would probably just be much easier to buy an account in the first place.

If something can turn into Profit, they will go for it.
They are greedy creature so they try to think greed, how to turn merit into cash

I see the option only to rebuy (for example 80 merits points earned by quality posts and 10 purchased) to the desired level. It is unlikely that people in their right mind would buy a full merit to get a new rank. If there are even such comrades, and if the awareness of this fact is very disturbing to you, then think about how many top-level accounts have been pumped before the introduction of the merits system. And maybe their owners at the time did not written a single useful post. Therefore, it is better to just concentrate on generating creative ideas and presenting them to the audience of this forum than to worry about the unfair receipt of merit. ;)

Smart guys will stay away from merit business. Of course, merit system is not a perfect fairly system, but it is fair enough to put abusers on red tags. You should never fall into Meri business and complains about merit system's fairness.
Overtime, merit system will make real members of the forum, including someone who are complaining feel satisfied due to its effects to make the forum better.

My opinion is that all smerits be withdrawn and given to a selected group who's duty it is to award merits based on laid down parameters. As long as you give members merits and they have vested interest, abuse will continue.

Merit selling has been going on for a while now, and it would be hard to track down those who do so. One of the ways however is to look at merited comments and see if it is actually worthy of a merit point. If its a rubbish post and it has been merited, then there should be suspicion about that. However if it is a good or great post, then it would be hard to track. However, it would be worth pointing out that for good/great posts, the people who buy merits, may feel neglected (as merit sources are scarce) and thus are pushed to buy merits, because they desperately need to rank up.

smart guys will do,the rest will be paying 20$ per merit and have,potentially,red trust as a bonus :)
after all said and done,a guy with alot of merits but crappy posts won't be able to take advantage of his merits for long
sooner or later he will be tagged and lose his account (I say lose since the only reason for him to buy merit is to make money,so red trust=lost account)

Are you daft? Selling merits is an abuse of the merit system and selling/buying of merits will result in your account getting tagged by DT.

A good post getting merited is obviously the credit of the poster in the first opinion. Its not possible to track down every merit seller/buyer and since much of it can happen outside the forum it can take time to investigate as well.

If they are really interested in taking part in discussions and interacting with other forum members (even though the toxicity in the forum is at brink) - they would not care about their rank.

think its rather a success of this forum....

Merit - a great business opportunity for old users on this forum to earn money. ;) Why shouldn't they abuse it then.

You see it as an opportunity, others as a risky business. Put yourself in the shoes of a high ranked member. If you have an account worth $200 and a campaign that is paying you $300 a month, would you risk it all trading merit to get additional $100? That's just stupid and greedy. IMO trading merit is only worth your time if you have some hacked accounts that you can risk. As for the buyers it's also stupid, because if you are able to create content valuable content you will get merit anyway. If you aren't, it will be easy to notice that you got wrongly merited for spam.

We can't do anything. Because this is not ours, we are only forced to accept. Think of those who entered the forum very early, each has more than a dozen accounts, and now are sr member above, they can do bounty to make money, sales advantages to make money, and then openly discuss in the forum like a good person, Behind it is selling their own account, and in this way to deceive newcomers. These are all facts. I have full proof. Why can't the forum design two sets of systems? One set is devoted to discussing the development of Bitcoin, upgrading through contributions, and one set for ordinary users to participate in discussions without affecting each other. The benefits here are so heavy that many bad things have been happening.

that's true.  the way he construct he's post really disgusting, and i do agree that checking he's post would waste your time. ;) sorry but that's the reality.

What to do are stay away from those merit business, and report someone who run the sort of business.
Good luck, topic creator.

You can just report if you want.

Just stay away from those "sellers".
A lot of people is already tagged as Merit seller or trader, that's not fun.

Why did you start the thread, bro.?
honestly, no need to post your thread because your ideas were mentioned in previous thread, which is just above yours.
Please stop making non-sense thread like this, which is likely off-context because your answers have been already given by someone else before yours.
To be constructive in the forum, your threads should be as unique as possible.

The problem of converting merits into a forum token is being discussed now very actively. The number of conversions to a new rank decreased catastrophically. The administration is struggling with this, but not very actively. I think they are happy that there will be a huge number of low rank users and an elite that will collect all the cream from signature campaigns.

I think they are hoping that the spammy/scammy low rank users will fuck off with their pajeet posting.

Lies and made up stories. People just make up new threads about every delusional dream that they have in mind and start shitposting about it everywhere they can. When will you people learn? :P

So is the forum supposed to be the place where get ranked up at lightning speed? Or is it the place where people can make threads to ask questions and discuss different topics pertaining to a specific issue?

They are not struggling. They are happy with the system and thus it will continue. You need to read more before posting shit.

The only thing you people can think of is campaigns and how to make money from them.
BTW I like that bolded part of the text. ;D

Why do I have the feeling that I know you in some way or the other?

I think, you shouldn't do anything about it being a business as it wasn't against the merit rules. Just go about your daily activities and leave the merit system alone.

First of all $20 for a single Merit is overpriced. If we compared to the price of a Full Member Account which required 100 Merit, and it only cost around $500- $600. While if you buy Merit to reach Full Member it will cost around $1000, almost twice.
I mean do they have a really stupid client that willing to buy a single Merit for $20?

Since both transactions are illegal, why don't they chose the cheapest one.

How higher the users are in rank, how more tokens they get for promoting the project in question, some projects even offer Btc or Ether to Hero Members and above, that's one the reason users want to grow in rank, if not the only reason...

What to do is doing nothing, except stay away from merit business.
Be smart with what you would like to do and keep yourself as safe as possible.

There's nothing you can do bout it. I don't think there was really a place that condemned the selling of merits when merit system as first introduced. The only thing you can do is either join them or over look it.

We should impose some taxations on the upper members holding merit points so that they only spend it whenever it is deserved.

The best thing about limiting or putting a check on the sale of merit is that threads to sell merit on bitcointalk are not allowed, unlike the selling of accounts that bloomed a lot due to accounts themselves being sold on forum.

Without the threads it gets very difficult to locate merit sellers and at the same time gets difficult for merit sellers to find an audience to sell their merit. The business won't proliferate till ban on merit sale on thread is maintained.

You might be right, Real14Hero. Official rules to ban accounts which exchange merits are necessary to maintain healthy, positive impacts of merit system on forum users.
However, I remember that I read somewhere in the forum that there are lots of telegram groups, and something like that, which were created specifically for merit business.

No quality woud be there, only there would be rubbish posts only.

And your are one of rubbish posters.  ::)

Let's them freely do what they wanted, then they will get what they deserved.

In reality, merits are invaluable for someone who need them, then you should not called such prices are over- or under-valued. Nevertheless, falling into merit business should be avoided somehow. In my stance, never should do this.
Furthermore, you should pay your attention on reading forum rules, forum structures, its basic/ essential functions, and helpful, informative available topics. You should choose the right things, most necessary to do in your early period as forum members. Please don't fall into merits, and stupid related questions like "How to get Merits? What should I do to earn merits? Lots of people abused merit systems, why have they not got punishments?" All of those sort of questions are non-sense, stupid in my opinion.

Merit is suppose to encourage users to give quality posts. The problem with the system is that giving of the merit depends on the subjective judgement of the eligible members.

Now due to difficulty of acquiring merits, users resorted to these merit buying.

if the merits itself can be earned by buying them then whats the need of the merit system as the motive wouldnt be fulfilled?

This is another side of life. You can not ask for perfect stuffs, systems, etc.
You can not stop black markets, right?
But in the forum, merit exchangers will be tagged as red color, and banned by modes. That's enough.

Don't worry my friend, there are red tags reservation for them, and it is unlimited compare to sMerit. Just wait for their perfect time of waving it and it will give us joy.  :D

how can this be resolved, it will be highly grateful if there's a way this can be resolved to help we newbies

I propose to lock the topic due to massive shitshows from shitposters, who are usually already to join such boring topic and show their shits in order to rise their postcounts.
For the question of the OP author:
- Stay away from who are running merit business.
- If you find them, simply report them to forum moderators.
- Spend more time to read books, documents, topics on blockchain technology instead of focussing on merit business.

I think this forum gets to much meaning for its. Own good