Ive been mining and speculating and trading for a couple of months now and one of the things that put me off were the janky intermediaries to get dollars into the markets.  Dwolla was really great with its low tx fees and direct access to my bank.  I had set up an account with LR but was disappointed to learn that the only way to fund my account was through an additional layer of Nigerian Donkey porn exchanges.  While paxum looks ok, the fees are too high IMO.  Some of the exchanges let you snail-mail checks to them but jeez that is so slow.

If a gov't wanted to squeeze bitcoin out of existence, I think this area would be the first target.