When dozens began to use it, the same person who allowed 32 MB network messages (there was, in fact, no explicit limit on blocksize at all, it was "unlimited") changed their mind, and added the 1MB blocksize limit.
And without realizing, froze this soft fork in forever, with important consequences on its later dynamics.
Or, if he realized, he meant bitcoin to be a reserve currency, and not a means of payment. Which is not impossible. With a decreasing block reward, fees must take over. But in order for fees to take over, there must be something scarce about them, because mining was supposed to be a highly competitive market. If block size is unlimited, there's no reason NOT to include a transaction with a minuscule fee: it is always better than nothing. It is only when the *resources used* to do so, become more expensive than the fee itself, that the fee will be excluded, but this suffers from a "tragedy of the commons" problem: ALL miner's resources suffer from big blocks, while the miner taking in the (small) fee gets a (small) reward. As such, with unlimited blocks, fees would remain very small, nothing would be pushing them up.
If you have a currency without "tail emission", and you need to spend "proof of work", there must be something paying for that, so you NEED BIG FEES. The only way to obtain big fees is to make a transaction something scarce: finite, small blocks.
But if you make transactions scarce, you hamper fluidity of the currency. It cannot be used any more for small payments. It can only be used for big payments at small rates and high fees: a reserve currency. Moreover, a finite amount of coins without "inflation" invites "hodling" and speculation, driving the coin price high.
So the phase of "generous block rewards and limited adoption" allowed for a phase of currency usage, getting a lot of people interested into it, telling people about buying their coffee with bitcoin and so on. Once this (scammy ?) phase is over, bitcoin will have a very high price through speculation, early adopters will be very rich, and one doesn't need the coffee buyer any more, one needed only his "pump" to get the price where it is now.
We now enter the transition of bitcoin into its final phase: very expensive reserve currency for unregulated big finance.