No, no, no a thousand times no, clearly you're not a banker. (For any British people reading this you might have been thinking of a similar word to "banker" to describe the OP though!) :-DWhere do I start?The Bitcoin economy is not regulated via Silk Road - like economies for any currency it fluctuates due to a huge amount of factors - the chief of which is how many people are actually buying and selling Bitcoins. If you read the latest article The Bitcoin Trader magazine then it would seem the economy is gradually stabilising but as with any fiat currency of course it's going to be subject to external forces including the ease of mining Bitcoins, the availability of Bitcoins in new markets (for instance the Chinese Bitcoing trading platform caused it to spike in value recently) and also the ease at which it can be cashed out.To call the rate of exchange a "clown rate" shows you haven't gone to all the trouble of reading the free guide on the SR site which says that when sellers list items they can do so in USD pegged to the MtGox rate - therefore your main beef should be with MtGox if anyone.Secondly the idea that hedging would assist buyers is ludicrous in the extreme. The reason it is only available to vendors is because it it is only any use to them.Let's say for instance you bought some "medicinal" marijuana for the Bitcoin equivalent of USD 400 at a time when the going rate was 5 dollars to the Bitcoin. You place the order using 20 Bitcoins and the funds are placed in escrow. The seller then dispatches your item i.e $100 worth of Marijuana - it is the VENDOR who is now at the mercy of market rates between now and when your order is finalised and the funds are released to him. If the rate drops so that it is $4 to the Bitcoin instead of $5 they will indeed lose $20 in real value from the sale and this is why hedging exists - however by this point you have already smoked your way through your $100 of bud and are beyond such concerns!As for having automated security processes - answer your own question, why don't we do this? You can't have it both ways. Apparently the people running this site are pulling the strings to massage the currency rate but are trustworthy enough to allow you to place orders centrally?!I am always happy to help people new to the forum or using Bitcoin but what you're saying makes no sense at all to me.V.