Initial bump is worth 1.0, each subsequent bump is worth 15% less. Assuming you will continue to have 1 earned merit in the last year, your total bump power will not exceed ~6.7 (1.0+0.85+0.72+0.61...) in 30 days, no matter how many times you bump.


No:


So it would be ~177 for Bitcoin_Arena.


If you're implying that Bitcoin_Arena is my friend - well, we haven't met so I'm not sure if we'd get along unless you know something I don't.

Some positive effects....

All of the sock-puppets pumping the Bankera/Spectrocoin scams are finding their posts not going to the top of the board after they post. That is the primary reason I have stopped posting there and I have those scammers on IGNORE anyway.

Maybe if I have something to add or maybe if a respected member posts in that thread then it might push the thread up in the listings but other than that they deserve to lurk near the gutter because these scammers are disgusting thieves that use their sock-puppets to try to fool people in to believing their scams are "real" projects.

Everything related to any kind of bumping business will be chaised and reported. I'm pretty sure that if there are enough evidence of such services, the related accounts will get what they deserve.
It will be quite expensive service and very easy to loose a valuable accounts.

I'm more worried that probably the marked for tagged,
merited accounts will be more active.

I think having only one account is enough for bumping a few topics if the user has big number of merits. Even if someone bumps 1 topic per day, the effect of the super bump will be 18 times the effect of a poster than mini bump a topic. I have made some diagrams to compare the effect of super bumps with mini bumps.
Any way, I guess every user misuse the new pumping system, will be punished by moderators.

This may happen, but the business model is not going to work as it did in the past. An account can only bump a thread via posting once per week, removing most incentives to have fake conversations in threads. Each account can also ‘superbump’ only so much before the effect of each additional superbump has nearly zero effect. If someone is farming merit amongst themselves to get a higher base bump score, and those accounts are all systematically bumping the same threads, this should be obvious to the admins and their base bump scores can be reduced (but not zeroed so to not make it too obvious to those behind the farmed accounts).

I predict this will result in more signature advertising and higher prices for forum ads because businesses will have more difficulties promoting themselves with a thread alone.

There are costs and risks for sure but the rewards are much greater too. Previously a bump to the ANN frontpage would last just a few minutes. Now if you get a thread to the frontpage it may stay there for hours, so one strategically executed bump could be worth possibly hundreds of "old" bumps.

Besides even the "old" bumps still work, kinda sorta. Threads with zero bump score start on page 4 and get sorted by last post date from there. Not sure what's the relative value of being on page 4 vs front page is though. Perhaps theymos could share some click stats. Some threads are still being relentlessly shitbumped so it must be worth something to someone.

You're overestimating the spammers involved in this business, do you think they read the meta section or the forum announcements?

I'm sure at least a few of them don't have a clue about the new system and think they are still bumping the service to the first page,  some have been paid for a period of time and they are doing this to get their money even if they know their task is almost useless but they are probably keeping quiet from the owner of the shitcoin. Also, there are probably some new "projects" that have zero posts and again the owners are paying those just to fake some conversation and interest in the coin.

If theymos could display for a week or a month this change on the alt boards in a similar style to the flag system at the top of the topic, not the small news link which probably 99% ignore then we will see them on page 24.

No, they can't since eddie13 has also some 500 ninja merits as back-up.  
He has earned 585 not 85.

Seems like the zero bumped posted have made it to the middle of page 3, and in my opinion it shows only one thing, there is little to none interest in altcoins from  high rank and merited users, a few of those topics making it to the first two pages are just super bumped but the people doing so haven't made a single post in the topic. I'm really bad at predicting things but probably in a month or so we will see the bumping bots advancing to page 2 and maybe 1.

Bump power must expire or wear off of threads pretty fast then.. I don't remember...

Ah there it is..
Maybe that is a little too fast..