[bachback]

yes, they should be much lower. Essentially the reason is the lack of competition. MtGox charges so much, because they can. Simple. And big players are not entering the market. B24 charged 0.00% per trade (the exchange was taken down though). In fact if you think about it BTC transactions could and should potentially have almost no cost, as opposed to fiat exchange transactions, which have a lot of overhead. The problem with bitcoin is that the exchanges are the new bottleneck for couterparty risk. In any network it is always the exit nodes that count.

The problems are mostly of a legal nature. There is a layer missing, which has not yet been implemented. The problem evolves around identity. Would it possible to link a name in a register to a virtual address globally? Nation states still want to collect taxes and money is tied to the power of nation states (you can witness what happens if this connection is removed in Europe).

If you want build an exchange you will have to a deep pocket for legal. On top of that this is quite a challenging task.

If you're interested in a discussion about this drop me a line at [e-mail]