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### What is Bitcointalk?
Bitcointalk is known for being the first forum dedicated to Crypto and created by Satoshi Nakamoto (the creator of Bitcoin) in 2009. it is used by people that want to learn more about crypto and the blockchain as well as advertisement for newer crypto coins or tokens. it also functioned as the first marketplace for people to trade crypto.

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### What did they change?
they decided to add a new system to discourage spam and useless comments by members to just increase their activity points while encouraging high-quality posts for the forum. this system is called Merit. Merit is given to posts or comments by other people reading the topic if they deem it worthy of their merit they will reward it.

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### How does this new system work?

| Rank.        | Required Activity.           | Required Merit.  |
| ------------- |:-------------:| -----:|
| Brand New      | 0 | 0 |
| Newbie      | 1      |   0 | 
| Jr Member | 30      |    0 |
| Member | 60 |10
|Full Member | 120 | 100    |
| Sr. Member | 240 |250
| Hero Member |480 | 500
| Legendary Member |775-1030 |1000


Beforehand all you had to do was to make sure you wrote 14 posts every 2 weeks to keep up your activity. however, this new system has made it a lot harder for new people to rank up as you have the risk of getting 60 activity points (this would make you a member with the old system) but miss out on the 10 merit simply because people did not deem your posts worth it.

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### How does this affect you? | And what can you do?

if you are like me in any kind of way you have probably participated in a few Bounty programs on bitcointalk. Usually some of the best bounties come from signature campaigns which are locked behind the ranking system. 
This now means that it is harder to achieve the higher ranks and reap the sweet Bounty rewards.

this means that now whenever your activity refreshes every 14 days you should not just post for the sake of posting, you need to make topics or make posts other people would be interested in reading and possibly send you a small amount of merit for your time. Your chance of getting Merit can be improved by.

* Answer users questions as well as you can. if somebody asks what wallet you use to give him a reason as to why you are using the wallets you are running.
* Don't post meaningless comments such as 'good question' or 'i don't know the answer to your question but here is a bad solution' if your goal is to reach a higher rank quality over quantity.
* Be respectful. Just being nice to people can go a long way. that goes for both Bitcointalk as well as Steemit.
* Don't post more than once on the same thread. Chances are people if you post too often on the same thread or in the same type of threads that people will just assume you are a spammer or somebody that is not worthy of their Merit.

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### Quick Word.
if you liked this post or disliked it, please comment what I should do better and improve it. If you like these kinds of informative posts please leave a comment about what you liked.

#### Thank you all for reading have a great day!