so what do you mean by decentralize the exchange?
How do you do that with fiat currency?
Or do you mean have more exchanges that talk to one another?
that would be a good step
ultimately a fully open source decentralized platform on TOR maybe?
You missed his point... the exchanges are the bridge between fiat and bitcoin... try getting a bank to give you an account owned by a decentralized network.
Yah I essentially meant this. Mt Gox acts as a bank account to temporary fiat currency, and also as a bank account for temporary BTC currency, and all its members trade shares of each pool with each other.
BTCs are decentralized very difficultly - hashing, competition, mining incentives, etc. To decentralize the exchange, you'd have to create another network for fiat currency. I don't think this is possible, as the system doesn't have control over it's creation like it does BTC.
I don't know if I'm explaining that properly, as my head's hurting from all the emotional rollercoastering today.
Having a network of exchanges that talk to each other might be feasible, but it's also dangerous - if a server has a buffer freeze, then others can't communicate with it anyway. If you have your money on Gox and it freezes like it did, how would your order be sent to the other servers and not be executed twice?
there is a place for fiat interface for a fee in the market, doesn't mean it needs to be an effective monopoly on trading
I think I understand what you're saying, but this is a battle against human nature. Why is microsoft so much larger than other pc OS developers? Why is google so much larger than the competitors? why is WoW so much more popular than all the others? It's because of human herding, not quality.