Deranking a user with purely airdropped merits would do more harm than good, IMO. They were earned legitimately at the time and those users were also influential in the growth of the forum.
It could also bring a debate of whether earned merits should be removed if they are believed to be given to undeserving posts.

If the goal is to prevent their joining signature campaigns, then, top managers already have a system which prevents spammers from joining their program.
Instead of deranking maybe removing some privileges, like what was done with the enhanced newbie restrictions.

This would work, but I doubt the OP would want to ignore a board which they just recently posted in. AFAIK, there is no other option for removing a topic you posted in from your "show new replies to your posts" list.
I sometimes follow up threads directly through my replies list linking directly to the thread (I just assume new replies would have been added after a while).
Piggy's notification bot is also a convenient way to keep up with threads.

I doubt Arsene Wenger would be keen on a return to the Emirates after iver a decade in charge, I also don't think he's the man to fix the club. The best pick would be Diego Simeon IMO, but he's unlikely to move and as you stated it's difficult to attract top talents without being in the elite football group.

Arsenal are being heavily linked Mikel Arteta with club agents reportedly seen leaving his residence.
Arteta has worked under a good mentor and should have gained valuable qualities, but is lacking in experience and I don't think he is the best option for the club at the moment. They need a manager with experience and a good success trail, I would have picked Allegri for the job or Ancelloti. Pochetino would also be a good option but us unlikely.

^^
I agree that there are favorites in some of the draws, but it is much too early to make picks on the teams that would emerge victorious, forms would rise and fall before the fixtures kick off, players/managers would also be bought, sold and sacked.

My tie of the round would be Dortmund vs PSG, then Atletico vs Liverpool.

Merit awarding is subjective, and also unregulated. A case where an undeserving posts gets lots of merits is abuse of the system, but little action can be taken against the accounts involved, a negative feedback at most. But if a post is deemed quality, then by all means I think you should give a generous amount of smerits. There shouldn't be a discussion about good posts getting too much merits.
There are lots of smerits and more can be generated by the admins. So I believe if theymos notices a gulf in the merit circulation compared to the quality of posts on the forum an action would be taken, either an increase in sources or source allocation (or both).

Do you mean the merit count or activity? Merit requirement for legendary rank is 1000 and the activity period could fall anywhere between 775 and 1030 and is random for each user.
There are many other unique number combination, buy I think the system is fine as it is. Users can always save their memorable merit records (like 777) as they grow their accounts.

It is improbable that one would type in this variation of the ledger website if it's done manually, the scammers would list probably spam various emails, groups, and forums with the phishing link and hope someone clicks on it without reading properly through.
Do not click on important links gotten from unsolicited messages or emails.
Do basic research on any site that involves finances.
Check every new site (the one you've not encountered before but want to explore) for possible scam links. You can do this by adding scam to the keyword and Google searching, also run it through the forums scam accusation section.

I read sometimes back about some physical assets being used for specific purposes (like payment for transportation, tuition fees etc) in some parts of the world, sort of like a utility fiat currency.
We also have gift cards such as Amazon and iTines, but these lack speculative value and have limited applications. Cryptocurrency is the primary digital asset at the moment.

I've been a member of one forum which uses this process to limit the use of multiple accounts, and it wasn't an effective one, IP addresses can get easily mixed up and it could result in the banning of accounts by unique users for being linked.
Changing your IP address wouldn't expose you any further to being tagged a multiple account user, but joining a public WiFi could create a link.

I can understand why cryptotalk will use IP addresses as a filter process to detect multiple accounts, but sharing the same IP is not price of connection, they can carry out further investigation before making any decisions so as not to make the forum unfavorable to users.
An alternative would be having a strict spam detection system, multiple accounts would surely result in lots of low value posts and those should not be rewarded and may even be made to earn one a temp ban.

Aguero? He has a good scoring record against Arsenal AFAIK, and if City do win I'll expect the margin to be more than one goal and I'll expect Kun ti be on the score sheet.

City at the Etihad? Chelsea, there's also always the possibility of an upset in one of the fixtures. I expect them to win the league, not just undefeated.

The January transfer window should bring no real changes to the Liverpool squad, I doubt any pivotal player would leave the team at the middle of such a great season.
However this does not indicate they would be undefeated throughout the season. There are still lots of matches left to be played and form can change in just a matter of weeks.

It would be good for one with little knowledge of Lightening Network to have a go to place to get all information on the forum about it, but that can not be the only reason for a child board as the search option can be useful to that effect.
A child board should encourage quality discussions and inquiries about a particular subject.
A board gets filled with pages and pages of tooicsyand replies, and I'm not certain if LN discussions can develop such kind of activity now.

The volatility in bitcoin makes it unsuitable as a means of conversion, especially one that will not be completed instantly but will go through so many processes.
It would also create a hassle as to how much it was when every transaction was made during the conversion especially when it's being done through, private over the counter trades.
Stable currencies are the most suitable solution in this case and is one of the reasons why it has become so popular in countries like China.

Breaking all of these forum rules does not lead to a ban. AFAIK sharing malware and plagiarism are the main reasons that could get an account banned.
Breaking some of the other rules could mean your post/thread will be deleted/trashed.
Signature spam is a bannable(temporary for first offenses and then increase in duration till a permanent an is issued) offense, but the rule is barely enforced.

You should note also that newbie accounts (below 30 activity) can be nuked for a variety of reasons.

If you are inquiring about exchanging/trading in general and not specifically bitcoins or fiat to cryptocurrency conversion, then the first option would be the most popular, with centralized exchanges being visited more, it provides more convenience and ease usually at the expense of privacy and also higher fees.
Local bitcoins are only used for fiat to bitcoin conversion and within wallets exchanging is not that popular.
I have not used the second option as yet so I don't know how user-friendly it is.

Bookmarking all your favorite topics could lead to a pile of saved links and it would create difficulty when sorting them as the links will not bear the name of the topic.
You can create a note with the links to your favorite posts and add a little description beneath it to guide you when sorting through.
There is no in-forum feature for that function at the moment.

You're now almost set for the member rank, just a little more merit and activity to go.

A positive attitude should be encouraged in the community. There are lots of guides in jow to get merit and how to develop a good posting habit.
Complaining about the system or begging for merits would only get you a negative trust or put you on the ignore list of most users.

Those are pretty realistic bets, although I'll be expecting Everton to score a goal or two and I predict that match to be a draw. I also think Sheffield United would win by a goal.
Also I expect the Tottenham revival to continue and I'll be backing Mourinho's men to win against Wolves.

Ansu Fati adds another record to his list of firsts;
He's Barcelona's youngest goal scorer in the laliga and the youngest player to both score a goal and assist in a single match. And yesterday he became the youngest player to score in a champions league match, at 17 years and 40 days. The fact that he did it against Inter Milan away from home makes his record even more impressive.
The spots for the round of 16 are almost filled up, all the focus now shift to today's games