Just out of curiosity - what if I had to exchange large amount of cash, say few thousands of $, for bitcoins and then send them to my friend who will have to exchange them back to cash - would this be possible? If I'm understanding this correctly volume of daily exchange is only about few dozen bucks, so, is is possible to exchange larger amounts of money?
The more bitcoins you buy, the more expensive they get and the more bitcoins you sell, the less expensive they get, so if you tried to transfer a large amount of money within a short amount of time, you'd be buying your bitcoins expensively and selling them cheaply. In other words, it would be expensive. Experiment with small amounts of money at the
Bitcoin Market and if you're in the EU, also try out the
Bitcoin Exchange. The market style buying and selling is a bit confusing for the first few minutes, but once you figure it out, it's really very simple. You can see what kinds of offers are already on the table to determine how much you should transfer. And as you transfer money, you'll see how the market responds.