As far as i know it is for purchase of research and accessing future services. Previous version of the platform used mainly bitcoins for trading.
I don't think VERI will be needed to use the new platform rewritten for ethereum system. But it might be tradabale there in the future.
I'm pretty sure the VERI tokens will be used for both accessing research and using the new Veritaseum smart contract system. The new tokens are Ethereum-based, but the tokens themselves are what would be used for everything in the Veritaseum world.