With BTS/fiat trading now dominated by BTC38, and very poor liquidity elsewhere, is it the case that basically the price feed is derived from a single exchange? If so, this makes us very reliant on a single external party where we don't have good transparency on the internal practices of such exchanges. It seems a shame that BitShares is promoting decentralised trading, yet the trading in our own token needs to take place on centralised exchanges in order to feed inputs to the system.
I've seen talk in the forum about setting up decentralised exchange between chains using escrow parties. Could somebody apply a similar idea to BTS/fiat, for example one of the gateways? If so, then that might also be a reliable price feed, depending on how active such a market might be. I expect the regulatory requirements would be more stringent than a crypto-crypto exchange though.
On a related point, it also seems a shame that for now, while its difficult for most casual users to maintain an up-to-date client, this forces them to centralised exchanges to hold and trade. This subjects them to risks as in the recent BTER case. It would be good if some form of trading were available from the online wallet, which although not as secure as a private wallet, removes the need to rely on external exchanges.