no there is no 'punishment', but if you mean to ask that why did your belt drop is because there is a qi glitch that happend i think when 3.5 came out, im not too sure tho, hopefully they will restore the belts to the way they were ;)
Ranks vary depending on your wins/losses during the day before. If you haven't played the day before, your rank will drop amongst the ranks of other non-active members. As for belt, it stays the same.
well im not talking about the ranks i know about that but i was just talking about the belts, so there was another qi glitch when the updated to 3.5? that seems to happen alot