Crypto is both an asset and also as a currency. But basically crypto is created as a digital currency, but slowly crypto becomes an asset where everyone buys and stores it for greater profit.
Bitcoin is created as a digital asset and a currency but it cannot be used as a currency for smaller transactions now,i am not certain about the thousand other coins in the market,you can call it as a currency,basically why everyone is investing in those in my opinion is to convert them back to bitcoin when the price is right.If you look at the daily trading volume you cannot say that people are purchasing and holding their coins.