Bitcoin is not a currency, but a greater-fool speculative token, that is, something that you buy at price X (you fool!) with as a goal to sell it for something like 20 X to a greater fool.  It was designed that way, even though people called it a "currency".  Like with socialism, greater fool games stop when you run out of greater fools.

But greater fools come in armies.  A small set of geeks got in in 2011, financing the gains of the very very small fools that had been heating their computers in 2010.  Then it crashed a factor of 10.  In 2013, a much bigger army of greater fools financed the gains of the hodlers of 2011 and 2012.  Then it crashed a factor of 6.  And last year, the "Koreans and Japanese" financed the gains of the hodlers of 2013-2016.  How low will it crash ?  A factor of 5 ?  A factor of 10 ?   We'll see.
The question is: is there, in this world, still a bigger army of greater fools ?  There's still the whole speculative finance market to take, but beware, these are professionals!   Bitcoin has only reached a fraction of the world population.  There's maybe still room for a last big final army of greater fools, but it will take some years.

As to "bitcoin is not the absolute monopoly", this is true, but the market is REMARKABLY synchronized.  It is as if the whole of crypto was essentially a single token.  Bitcoin has remained around 33-35% of market cap during all this falling of 60% or more, give or take a few percent.  So there seems to be one single "crypto" thing out there for greater fools.

We will see.  I table on at least 3-4 years of bear market.  It might be the final one.   But I table on a very, very big bang in something like 2021 or so.
If we go below the previous ATH, that is, $1200, I think it is done.  If we remain above it by a factor of 2, I guess we're in for a long, cold winter, and in a few years, another mega bubble.  Probably the last one.  There won't be greater fools left after they've paid for the whole shebang.

not private at all .
they just didn't promote this coin enough in bitcointalk.org 
you may also notice that almost every japanese coins are successful.  (bitcoin by satoshi, SUMO, yenten)

@DooMAD
If they're really not adding anything, then they shouldn't get merit. But it doesn't need to be mind-blowing, either. Someone suggested a feature where all umerited posts would be hidden (which I may do at some point) -- I think that it'd be good to look at it as asking what posts you would want in such a summary. So not just incredible posts which might've taken an hour or more to write (those should probably get 10+ merit), but also the questions, arguments, jokes, etc. which couldn't be removed from a thread without starting to lobotomize it.

It's all very new, of course, so maybe this strategy will not actually be the best, but it is what I had in mind when designing the system.

@TMAN, I have been adding sources, and I will continue.

Theymos has said he'll be monitoring it closely and adding more merit sources as he sees fit, hopefully that will be the case and we won't end up in a scenario where ranks are much much harder to come by. I don't think anyone will have a major issue with a slower rate of progression, even if it was halved or so, but if it's 50 times or more then it's a bit ridiculous.

Don't be such a pessimist. If you are a Newbie you can still become a Junior Member without any merit, and then with only 10 merits you can become a Member - that's feasible. After that, be happy to remain a Member for a year or two. As for higher ranks, don't underestimate the power of miracles

- Everyone could decide who gets to be a merit source. "Applicants" would still gather at least 10 posts for evaluation, and the users could vote for them. Those with more votes would become a merit source. This is far from being ideal, but it is still less "centralized".
- Users would be given a small amount of sMerit, based on their activity (still not ideal, because Merit would be less valuable this way)
- There could be a new type of sMerit that users could purchase, and then use to evaluate content.

I think the third option is better and I will explain why. We all buy books, newspapers, movies, music, etc.
We buy these things because we like it's content, and by buying them, we are expressing just that. So I see no problem in buying sMerit, and then using it to express my support for some of the posts I read, because I liked them. Money is used to express value, so this is exactly what would be happening with this option.


To end this post, I will repeat that I like what this system provides (the ability to judge content), but I think the ability to give Merit should be as open as possible (without trivialization of course). Maybe I will never run out of sMerit, and what I think it could be a problem will never become one, but right now these are the concerns I have about this system.

Looks like @theymos has kicked the hornet's (spammers) nest... 

Member merit is start at 10 points..Full member merit is 100 points. to get the full member, I need 90 points.
What a long journey