lets improve liquidity by introducing better markets?! its the lack of liquidity that prevented BTC from hitting rock bottom and the little liquidity there is comes from people trading with BTC instead of trading in it. as with the mainstream economies, its that competitive greed that is ruining the currency, making it more volatile and therefore less suited to exchange of goods and services, further eroding the liquidity - it is supposed to be a cooperative currency and trying to make money from money (at the expense of others) is not a very cooperative occupation
how about mining pools controlling the sale of BTC (they are after all, creating the currency) or some sort of mechanism to make BTC "rust" (it could simply rust back into mining rewards instead of disappearing, preventing this competitive mindset and encouraging more circulation
A better market for BTC will lead to a more stable price and better acceptance of BTC from merchants.
Assume you got a bar: You want to get paid in BTC but want to be sure you get about 4$ for each bear. How can you be sure you get 4$ +/-1% if the prices goes up and down 30% every day and the biggest exchange is unable to handle trading several times a week?
that's just mainstream competitive market thinking with the perspective of viewing BTC as a commodity instead of a currency. i am from australia, can't speak for all australians, but in general, when someone buys or sells a beer here, we don't check the price of USD at the markets to make sure the beer costs US$4, we simply have a price for the beer in AU$4 with the understanding that AU$4 will still be worth AU$4 when it is next exchanged. the value of AU$4 against USD, or the volatility of that conversion is not a concern to the buyer or the seller as they're circulating the currency quick enough for it to not effect them. the exchange rate and liquidity are only really relevant if you are investing in currency and holding onto it. similarly, if your bartender just thinks about selling the beer for 0.04BTC and there is a big enough economy for him to spend that 0.04BTC and acquire goods and services with the same value as the beer, he doesn't really need to worry much about the conversion rate to $, only make periodic adjustments when the goods or services they're buying increase or decrease in BTC value.
another good example of alternative thinking are bitcoin brokers (as opposed to exchanges); those that set their prices based on their own supply of $ and BTC or 24 hour market averages are a lot less volatile.
This is why BTC needs a stable exchange. IDC that people think BTC has value because people can purchase goods/services with BTC since the valuation of BTC rises so much who would want to spend BTC buying a fixed price or depreciating asset?
Due to Gox BTC's salad days may, I stress may, be nearing an end. I say this because of all the recent hype and now Gox has Goxed BTC and any and all goodwill new people had towards BTC. BTC because of Gox is now no different than a boilerroom looking for new suckers to buy into BTC and get crapped all over and then sell BTC at 1/2 -1/4 the price they bought it for. I know this is not what "smart" or "astute" investors/traders would do, but that's the point. All the recent new money just got fleeced and Goxed over.
To me for BTC to remain viable over a longer period of time the majority of the community must decide on a equitable trading system. As we see yet again today Gox is not that system since a few bots can destabilize their trading engine on what was really a pretty low volume day. This problem is more serious than people seem to admit since Gox stated they allegedly upped their trades/sec by 50x. I guess that means Gox's engine can now handle 50 calls a second, up fro 1 call a second.
IDC is it's this thread or the threads linked on the first page, but for BTC to accomplish anything other than massive embarrassment a few powerful people must do something or a large group of regular folks must learn to work as a group, decide on a plan and not everyone act like they're the chief while the group is trying to implement the plan.