I think you are confused a bit, although I wrote before a quote from his words.
So: at that moment (Jan 24, 2018), if you were already Legendary, you would have received an airdrop of merits equal to the number this rank requires now: 1000. If you were Hero, you would have received an airdrop of 500 merits. And so on: the same applied for Sr. Members, which received 250 airdropped merits, or 100 for Full members.
All these merits were "born" through code, of course.
After that moment, all the new registered users had to start earning from 0 merits.
I hope it's more clear now