The biggest transactions in bitcoin are done there, not on corrupt exchanges. ^Sob^
I have no BTC stored on exchanges, because I simply do not trust them. ^Grin^
Private sales seem to keep the prices depressed. If the big buyers were forced to buy on exchanges (i.e. miners don't sell bitcoins privately), we would have true price discovery.
in the last year due to all the AML/KYC requirements, and money movement limits/flags big players dont bother with the php exchanges no more. as well as the whole bitcoinica, intersango, mtgox, cryptorush, mintpal saga's the big players wont even bother day trading on exchanges.
thats why bitstamp and btc-e moved from well over 100k a day volume to under 25k a day volume.
so the mindset of viewing these exchanges as gospel measures needs to decrease, and many people need to start looking at the bigger picture.
EG if 20 people want bitcoins in your town and your the only one locally who has them.. then raise your prices on your local demand and for goodness sake stop using crappy exchanges to devalue your holdings..
learn the word 'bartering' and forget the words 'price fixing'.
the world has online gold exchanges, but do you honestly think that true gold holders trade at the price of the online exchanges.. no..
i dare you to go into a pawn shop or goldsmiths and demand a bar of gold at the market price. trust me, you wont get it.