When I was 98789 I staked one of my bitcoin addresses, but unfortunately it was a Coinbase address. To the best of my knowledge, they removed the ability to sign messages years ago, so while I know that that is the gold standard to prove you are who you claim to be, I won't be able to provide a signed message for that reason. I see no reason why I would claim some really old account (that has been inactive since then and that does not belong to some community "hero") to be me, but as alternatives to prove that I am 98789 I could tweet whatever message you want from @tregaus4 (a crypto/fake X account that belongs to me, as you can see in this unedited message from 98789 (
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/need-some-follower-will-pay-1310101)) or if someone with more privileges is interested in verifying my claim, I can somehow confirm via email.
Tehnically, tg9 is the alt account of 98789 so you should log into your main account, tag the new one with neutral and then you can put the old back to rest if you wish and continue with new one from scratch.
Merit was introduced. I think the change was introduced not so long after I left the forum, and I have been aware of that change for a few years now (I kept visiting the forum from time to time, I simply did not participate in any discussions nor logged in). I do not consider I was the worst of spammers (at least compared to the average user, I was not a valuable asset to Bitcointalk either), but I would like to build my reputation and my ranks up under the system in place. This is probably 90% of why I went for a new account.
Imho, you shoulnd't feel like you ranking up in the old system is somehow underserving and that you have to start from scratch. I mean, there are bunch of high ranking shiptosters now thanks to the old system but its pretty much obvious who are they, meaning they got stuck at their current rank, or still have similar amount of merit even 5 years since the introduction of merit.
Everything is somehow confusing. Was your account hacked or sold?
From what I understand, neither. He just don't want to log in with the old one, for whatever reason.
