bitcoin wasn't created in 2008-2009 by satoshi to become a trading toy for people to buy and sell it to make profit. bitcoin was created to work as a p2p money so you can send money to anybody anywhere in the world without the need of banks and paying them a lot of money to do it.
so no bitcoin doesn't need exchanges.
My thoughts EXACTLY.
Personally, this was the only reason why I got into Bitcoin in the first place.
Seemed appealing at first.
Except not many people using Bitcoin, thats why you need exchanges. Imagine someone wanted to pay you with some altcoin you dont want to hold, so you need to exchange the altcoin to Bitcoin as well. The same way other people preffer their local currencies over Bitcoin, so exchanges are necessary for Bitcoin to be much more useable. Everyone is different and has its own prefferences, and thas why exchanges are used so people end up with what they want.