You may need an exchange once to acquire crypto (and even then, not really, you could buy crypto from an individual, or mine it, or just take a payment in crypt

You may need an exchange once to acquire crypto (and even then, not really, you could buy crypto from an individual, or mine it, or just take a payment in crypto...) but once you're "in the system" so to speak, you can pay and receive crypto without ever having to deal with exchanges anymore.