Because of bitcoin's origins in a largely an-cap community - and the continual anti-Government, pro-capitalist mindset in a significant part of the community as it stands now - there's not actually as much demand as there should be for "legal" exchanges etc. As a result, there's much more competition in the "shady" exchange space, less competition in the "legal" exchange space, and two things result: people occasionally lose a significant chunk of their life savings to shady exchanges, and legal exchanges don't have as much of a drive to be technically brilliant.