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In my understanding the primary purpose of a cryptocurrency exchange is to let users trade traditional currency for some kind of crypto-coin. Most exchanges also allow provide storage and crypto-to-crypto trade.
But exchanges add centralization, they have questionable security and they can manipulate cryptocurrency prices at their will.
Can there be an alternative market structure for cryptocurrency that liberates us from evil exchanges?
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There are decentralized exchanges that will launch soon such as Bisq or Coinffeine.
There are already live decentralized exchanges, https://etherdelta.com for Ethereum tokens being probably the most used currently
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Decentralized mining might be the answer. At least that's the original vision for how to distribute crypto. Users buy hardware to mine crypto instead of buying crypto directly via an exchange. Exchanges create a central point of failure but that's a direct result of centralized supply. If you can decentralize mining then you remove centralized points of failure. Also it's very hard to ban computing hardware.
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LocalBitcoin is an attempt but it relies on a central server. Bisq removes that central point of failure, it is a fully decentralized exchange featuring escrow service and a Bitcoin wallet
As answers note, there are already multiple projects that provide software to that end, so this question appears to come down to requestig an assessment whether such a push will be successful. I don't think that this sort of prediction of the future can be answered factually today. – Murch – 2017-09-19T14:15:57.537