This is one of the unintended side effects of the blockchain phenomenon; that actually nullifies the original intentions of the creator. It is centralization and even worse the impossibility of an average user without significant wealth to climb onto the bandwagon. If you are exchanging small sums like me; you are liable to pay 30% of your investment to get your coins or tokens to a safer place! Incredible!

Yes it is big business and there are comparatively few businesses where you can make so much money in such a short time. I can well imagine; that their days are numbered; because this is going to motivate developers; interested in decentralization and more universal participation of the peoples of the world to seek alternative ways.

I am astounded that although it is such a big business; we still do not have some kind of a watch dog;  an online platform dealing with these exchanges; publishing daily results from their exchange rates. There just does not seem to be any body monitoring them; hardly much user interest either; all are running at breakneck speed to accumulate and trade at any cost; assuming it will all pay back. But that was never the intention of the creators. The main driving force was P2P transactions and and a more decentralized redistribution of wealth; through opening up historically closed gates for the majority of human beings into the secluded financial fortress!

But this all makes one feel that Visa and Pay Pal are after all less greedy than some of these exchanges!

No matter what the reasons, be it the greed of the miners or the heavy costs incurred by the miner (generally exclusive to POW technologies as that of Bitcoin), the manipulation through a new breed of speculators; or the uncontrolled rates imposed by the rather few exchanges; it is not much of competition that these exchanges are confronted with; when you realize that the DLT phenomenon is not restricted to one continent or a nation _ there is apparently not a single exchange in whole Africa!; this is just unashamed and needs to be addressed; just as BCH has addressed some of problems inherent in the good old Bitcoin. Some of these transaction fees may even exceed sometimes the wages of a worker in poor countries! This sure is not the great promise of this otherwise great liberating technology; that has the implicit mission to welcome all the whales and normal fishes into its folds.