[Idea] An Almost-Decentralized Currency Exchange

[OdinHephaestus]

The Idea
Based off the IRC infrastructure, this idea is based around the idea that anyone would be able to set up a "exchange server" using free and opensource software.  These "exchange servers" would basically be hosted orderbooks/webs-of-trust that responds to the same, unified, network protocol.  Integrated wallet clients like Armory, or standalone clients, would connect to any exchange server (or multiple servers, splitting up the order into smaller chunks) to process transactions to/from BTC to the desired e-currency (PP, LR, Dwolla, etc).  This type of exchange allows an almost infinite number of exchanges to exist.  Some exchanges would pander to shady-types (allowing only transactions though the TOR or I2P networks), others would be mainstream'd (e.g. FreeNode) and widely used.  Servers could also be used for private use, like an inter-community exchange.

My Thoughts
While I think this would significantly help our current exchange problem, and move us towards a more "automated-btc-otc" like exchange system, it still has its flaws.  There is still the chance that a single popular exchange server would handle the mass quantity of transactions.  While these exchanges server would not hold the currencies themselves (unless an escrow is placed on the order), a large exchange still poses a problem if their ISP ever blocks the specific protocol traffic because of legal issues, etc.

Your thoughts and/or opinions?

TL;DR? IRC BTC Exchange, but cooler.

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[tutkarz]

Cash is very good in real world as payment and bitcoin is very good as virtual payment. If you want to exchange them you have to bring it to lowest denominator which is real world payment. And it bring most problems because people are expecting to buy bitcoins as easy as they can use them which is impossible without someone in the middle like banks. And we dont want anybody in the middle. This is main problem for any exchange and should be fixed first before thinking about other minor problems.

This is why i posted an idea about bitcoin shops https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179778.0  which looks to me be the simplest decentralised method and ofcourse on top of that net of shops you can think of any protocol to average price or other things we could add. But we have to have alot of small exchcanges like that run by many people. It is only solution to risk of closing big ones, attacks and centralisation.

[daybyter]

What I want to try now, is a smartphone based system. A p2p client, that posts GPS coordinates to find people in your area, so you can exchange currencies. Like localbitcoins, but without a central list of users. Just a network of connected phones. They have to cache the IP addies of the peers, so they can connect again, when the phone was offline. Problem will be to get a critical mass of users, but it might be an interesting experiment.