Just like html was to the development of the internet.
Please stop comparing bitcoin to html, e-mail or tcp/ip. These protocols didn't have the baggage of unit cost on their back.
If HTML would be like bitcoin, then new HTML adopters would have to pay monetary tribute to the earlier adopters of HTML to start using it.
Then HTML wouldn't have developed very far and people would have been motivated to create alternative options, without the baggage of those early adopters, who just want to earn on your expense, without doing anything themselves.