That is only one of many details in the protocol that suggest that it was never meant to be more than a computer experiment.
This is disingenuous. Many ideas aren't meant to be more than an experiment, until they work.
But bitcoin is not an idea, it is a specific implementation of an idea (albeit with some flexibility).
"A heavier-than-air vehicle with internal combustion engine, propellers, and fixed wings can be made to fly" -- that was an idea.
The Wright Brothers' Flyer One was an implementation of that idea.
That idea was indeed the basis of modern air transport and warfare.
The Wrights Brothers' implementation was just a technical experiment, that aimed to show that the idea could work.
Many more experiments, lots of incremental improvements, and a couple of revolutionary inventions were still needed before that idea could become a commercial product.
However bitcoin isn't the first cryptocurrency experiment.