The primarily problem with this MtGox Affair is not that some poorly secured web site got hacked, the problem is that there are too few exchanges.

I propose we need to talk about the possibility of building some sort of open source, out of the box Bitcoin exchange solution. Maybe it needs to be some sort of toolkit, some sort of framework, or maybe some full blown system that you can get up and running quickly, and then make it easy for implementers to improve upon their exchange with contributions from the OS community.

In addition to immediately making it easier for far more exchanges to exist, this would allow for greater trade volume and increased liquidity, given the $1,000/day-$10,000 month rule.

This may sound ambitious, but not so much given that someone has already done a great deal of work to produce such an OS product -- MtGox.

I'm thinking that perhaps MtGox should be asked to release their framework to the public. Let us fix it and let's just get on with this thing. Because, let's face it, their reputation is absolutely trashed. But if we can bring transparency into the game, I have no reason not to trust a brand who has a product that I am capable of auditing.

Thoughts?

(Speaking as programmer of 10 years -- lots of experience with PHP, MySQL, JavaScript (Dojo. jQuery, Prototype), HTML, CSS)