Are exchanges essential for Bitcoin?

[flug]

If the exchanges became defunct for whatever reason (legal, attacks, etc), would price discovery still be possible just from the trade between bitcoin and goods and services?

[Stampbit]

nope, if the exchanges go down theres nothing to peg anything to because the exchanges scared away businesses in the first place.

[doobadoo]

It would be a major setback only in how fast it could be adopted, but i think eventually bitcoin would take hold, albeit much longer without the ease of converting currencies.  People might not adopt because it seems too complicated and sketchy to find a real person to change cash for btc.   These folks would take extra convincing making all our jobs harder.

Additionally, businesses that accept btc, would have to REALLY accept btc and not use bitpay on the backend to convert to fiat.

Under this scenario I see it taking hold in internet circles/tech companies, paying IT guys/programers some of their pay in btc.  Online electronics retailers accepting it. 

You would have to convince some one of the merits of the system and why they should buy some for a really long holding period. 

I actually think this would be the best way.  Xchanges make it easy for the fast money hoards to come and go.    These folks have bought their first bitcoin and they are posting questions like "who publishes bitcoin software"  and "what is the blockchain."  No exchanges mean that some one would first have to develop a level of understanding as to what exactly is going on before they would take the extra step of arranging a means of securing bitcoin. A nonexchange world means a stable, gradually increasing price (as long as we drive adoption faster than mining).

How we would report, and be able to rely on pricing is a big question mark, but i imagine some one will have an answer to that.   I personally hope that the gov'ts take down all the exchanges. 

I;ll be here on the boards, mailing small amounts of cash to people running for the exits and buying btc up for a song, knowing that in the end, the better engineer currency must win.

[KSV]

thats when the P2P exchanges rise to the occasion . . . the govts can't win this 1.

case in point - TPB

[halfawake]

Right now, yes, they are in some form or another.  But if bitcoin truly takes off, then they won't be necessary any more.

[Sultan]

As long as there are markets which we can all have access to, then price discovery will be possible. Markets, especially emerging ones, are incredibly emotional.

At the moment we need exchanges because of the price volatility, so if we ever trade bitcoin, we are, straight away, checking what the latest price on an exchange is.

However, if that spot price on the exchange stayed the same for a while, people eventually won't bother going to the exchange to see how much their bitcoins are worth.