The whitepaper says: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System so It's a digital currency and shouldn't be called otherwise even though people use it as an asset or something else.
It doesn't matter what the whitepaper says if it's use ends up being a digital gold of sorts rather than a currency. Most people buy Bitcoin because it will go up in value due it's properties. Who buys Bitcoin, pays fees for the purchase, then sends it to whatever merchant only to buy whatever you could already but with fiat? It's nonsense. In most cases, most people want to hold it and see it go up, just like gold.
You use money you don't value (fiat) to buy stuff, not a money that goes up with time. Unless you find a real use case like paying for an VPN, im going to hold it and so does most people, which is why big blockers so stupid.