As per your own words, since "Bitshares is a company, not a currency", I can only assume Bitshares are a form of equity. This fact should be most unsettling to any Bitshares' holders who believe the Bitshares' platform is dependent on I3's continued development. It is my guess that Bitshares, the company, is in violation of numerous US securities laws.
We've had lots of fun with metaphors over at bitsharestalk.org and bitshares.org. Two of the classics, written by Dr. Charles Evans, are linked here:
http://bitshares.org/decentralized-autonomous-jedi-mind-tricks/
http://letstalkbitcoin.com/a-bitrose-by-any-other-name/
Bottom line is that metaphors are helpful in explaining certain concepts until the light bulb comes on for people. There is a duality to BitShares that allows you to view it as a currency or a company. Both are true, depending upon the context.
My favorite way to look at it is that BitShares are shares in a company just like Bitcoin are shares in a company. (Just because I called Bitcoin a company in the classic article that introduced the concept of a Decentralized Autonomous Company (DAC) -- http://letstalkbitcoin.com/bitcoin-and-the-three-laws-of-robotics/ doesn't suddenly make Bitcoin subject to securities laws.)
Both Bitcoin and BitShares are volatile crypto-currencies on their faces. But, BitShares viewed as a company (a blockchain like Bitcoin) does much more. It runs a full-up unmanned crypto-exchange providing decentralized trading services and the ability for users to create currency and commodity derivatives backed by BitShares collateral. That's what we call BitAssets (BitUSD, BitGLD, BitBTC, etc.) These are the real currencies we are aiming for. Products of BitShares "the company". These are what give you stability (pegging to real world assets) and pay you interest. So, inside a single Bitcoin 2.0 currency you have a whole new financial system on a blockchain. Speculators can use the built-in exchange and trade BitShares tokens thinking of them either as shares or coins or fuel tokens, or whatever metaphor makes sense to them. Consumers just deal with the BitAsset products - the "smart coins".
So simultaneously you can find BitShares in the top 5 on coinmarketcap.com and BitUSD at around #35 as a non-volatile "smart coin" that tracks the value of the US dollar.
So we shouldn't get wrapped around the axle about the implications of a particular metaphor someone is using to explain a particular concept about BitShares. I personally jump between metaphors a lot when explaining things to people. My intent is to show that the design decisions are reasonable when viewed in the right perspective. It helps people escape from preconceived mindsets and appreciate what we have here.
In reality, BitShares is a Whole New Animal. We can only describe it like the classic story of blind men describing an elephant while touching its many dissimilar individual parts. Hope this helps.
