An important difference being that nobody ever expected users to use the x86 instruction set directly. Whereas the very clear initial expectation for Bitcoin was that it was an actual currency used for transactions by end users.
On what part of the stack exactly? Are they crafting RPC requests to a BTC node manually? Using wallet software? Using more advanced wallet software with social recovery features and named addresses?
I think you may be forgetting, earlier users of computers were using punchcards..
Are you... asking me to explain what the Bitcoin folks were thinking when they claimed they were creating a viable peer-to-peer electronic cash system? Sorry, you'll have to ask them that. About 80% of what cryptocurrency advocates claim to believe seems unrealistic to me. But given that they published that paper in 2008, I suspect punch cards were not what they had in mind.
